London

THE removal men descended on New Bond Street last week to begin the task of clearing out the stock at Partridge. By the morning of Friday, September 4, the biggest object left in the window was a large roll of bubblewrap being used to pack up the antiques for loading onto several lorries parked along the street.

FROM September 25 to 27 The London Art Book Fair will be launched at the newly expanded Whitechapel Art Gallery in Whitechapel High Street London E1.

LONDON’S Courtauld Institute of Art have stated that their Witt and Conway Libraries will continue to remain open to the public five days a week and their Photographic Survey collections will remain accessible by appointment.

Mallett have put on hold plans to leave Bond Street. In the wake of a massive rent rise last year, the London dealers announced their intended departure from the luxury goods thoroughfare, but they have been unable to pass on the lease of the building.

Furniture Futures is the first in a new series of biennial design symposia at the Victoria & Albert Museum.

MATTHEW Barton, who has over 20 years experience in the auction business, will hold his first sale under his own banner on November 25 in West Kensington.

DAVID Lester’s Florida company International Fine Art Expositions have announced that Freya Simms, who recently stepped down after four years as show director of Olympia’s antique fairs, is joining them as director of sales and marketing at Expoships and IFAE.

HAUGHTON Fairs are to move their venerable International Ceramics Fair & Seminar from its long-time home at the Park Lane Hotel, Piccadilly to the Mall Galleries on Carlton House Terrace, SW1.

Scrimshaw, or carved bone and ivory, is very collectable, but the signature and scenes on this 7in (18cm) long whale’s tooth put it in a special league.

Dreweatts have stepped up their competition for London business by appointing James James-Crook as Director of Business Development, with immediate effect.

PARTRIDGE Fine Art, the landmark Bond Street dealership in business for more than 100 years, went into administration this week.

FLORIDA fairs impresario David Lester and his wife Lee Ann have taken control of the summer Olympia fair. They have already rebranded it the London International Fine Art Fair.

THE organisers of the TEFAF Maastricht fair are inviting dealers to apply for stands in a new specialist works-on-paper section at next year’s event.

THE busiest week of the year for Old Masters in London provided further signs that the top end of this market is surviving the downturn better than its modern counterparts.

THIS autumn, the Crafts Council will stage the fourth Origin: the London Craft Fair at Somerset House on The Strand in London.

NEWS that the Grosvenor House Art & Antiques Fair had been scrapped sent shockwaves through the trade last week – but that soon gave way to a determination that the event must be revived in some form.

IRONICALLY, in its 75th and sadly final staging last month, the Grosvenor House Art & Antiques Fair reaffirmed its status as unquestionably the UK's flagship antiques event.

THE readjustment taking place at the top end of the contemporary and modern art market was once again in evidence at the latest flagship London auction series.

WELL-KNOWN silver dealer Nicholas Shaw is to leave the trade to become the new head of department at Bonhams. Following more than two decades working as a dealer, he begins work as an auctioneer in September.

THE campaign to persuade the government to extend business support to the antiques industry has set out in detail exactly what it wants to achieve.