London

Post-War sales at Christie’s (17.5/10% buyer’s premium) tend to be more predictable, less mercurial events than their cool contemporary outings and the established reputations of the artists invariably guarantee a procession of solid six-figure results.

CLARION Events, the organising arm of Olympia, have appointed Dan Gorton, 34, as fair director for the three annual Fine Art and Antiques Fairs.

Tea-drinking first took off in the West in the late 17th century and in its wake came a whole host of paraphernalia associated with the consumption and storage of the beverage.

The music sale held by Sotheby’s on December 7 contained two exceptional manuscripts – both of them presenting examples of the composer’s best loved works.

Against the background of the London Impressionist, Modern and Contemporary sales both the major auction players held specialist Surrealist evening sales – Christie’s (17.5/10% buyer’s premium) on February 4 and Sotheby’s (20/15/10% buyer’s premium) on the following evening of February 5.

Christie’s South Kensington’s Ski sale, held annually in February, was doubly topical this year, coinciding with the Winter Olympics.

There were peaks and troughs in Christie’s South Kensington’s (17.5/10% buyer’s premium) annual 166-lot Art Nouveau sale, February 12, but little appears to have changed since their last auction foray into this field, in April 2001.

ELEVEN top dealers make their debut at this summer’s Grosvenor House Art and Antiques Fair and it is clear that the organisers of our most prestigious event have taken the opportunity to beef up their fine art quota.

The most recent of the three annual Olympia fairs, the Spring Fine Art and Antiques Fair, which runs at the West London exhibition halls from February 26 to March 3, is a mix of traditional and modern very much with the decorator in mind.

Pictured right is one of Twelve Angels, 9ft 10in (3m) high towering chairs made of dried branches that look like sinuous dancers. They are the work of Polish designer Dorota Koziara and three of these are among the more striking furniture forms to be found in CDA 2002, the 6th annual exhibition of Contemporary Decorative Arts and Design that opens at Sotheby’s Bond Street Galleries on February 20 and runs until March 1.

UK: Thornhill Galleries are a 120-year-old British company that specialise in architectural antique interior design. They make panelled rooms on commission in antique pine and seasoned hardwood and carry a wide stock of period fireplaces and accessories, garden statuary and other architectural features.

London’s first costume and textile sale of the year took place at Christie’s South Kensington (17.5/10% buyer’s premium) at the end of January, the 318 lots netting just over £150,000 with an 87 per cent take-up by lottage, 89 in money.

The London art market received a major lift in the salerooms last week when Sotheby’s and Christie’s attracted remarkably strong levels of international demand for their February round of Impressionist, Modern and Contemporary auctions.

LAWYERS say that Sotheby’s and Christie’s can expect to face a £100m lawsuit over price-fixing at UK auctions within the next few weeks.

IN 1954 the painter and printmaker, Philip Reeves (born 1931), being interviewed for a post as a lecturer at the Glasgow School of Art, produced a letter of reference from the artist Robert Austin (1895-1973).

MAYFAIR art dealers Agnew’s are hotly contesting claims for a £1.5m refund over an Old Master which is at the centre of a dispute over who painted it.

The Maritime sale held by Bonhams (15/10% buyer’s premium) in their New Bond Street rooms on January 16 was a sizeable 400-lot affair divided roughly 50/50 into paintings and maritime artefacts – the latter featuring anything from ship models to scrimshaw, divers’ helmets to sextants.

The final ceramics auction in London last year was the glass sale held at Sotheby’s Olympia on December 18. The top priced lot at £50,000 was this damaged but rare North German covered goblet of c.1675, painted and signed by Johann Anton Carli of Andermach am Rhein with a scene of Christ and the woman of Samaria.

The 102 lots of European ceramics that rounded off Christie’s (17.5/10% buyer’s premium) December 13 furnishing sale at King Street had, despite a degree of softness to the Meissen market, a generally high take-up for that factory, with 18 of the 25 lots of tablewares and figures changing hands and some strong individual results.

If 1930s Blackpool looks like a British version of the Italian Riviera it is because this poster advertisement, right, was designed by a Neapolitan watercolourist, Fortunino Matania, for the LMS railway company whose trains serviced the Lancashire resort.