Devon

PIERS Motley has taken over the Bicton Street Auction Rooms in Exmouth from Martin Spencer-Thomas who has retired after 25 years as an auctioneer and valuer in Devon.

FOUR sketches by Pre-Raphaelite artist John Everett Millais, found tucked inside covers of Led Zeppelin LPs, have been withdrawn from sale at Chilcotts auctioneers in Tiverton, Devon, because of a “misunderstanding over ownership” according to the auctioneers.

Led Zeppelin, Robert Burns and a 14-year-old John Everett Millais might seem unlikely bedfellows. But a group of four pencil drawings which have surfaced at the Devon auctioneers Chilcotts of Tiverton appear to link the three.

BEARNES Hampton & Littlewood have held their first sale at the newly renovated Dowell Street, Honiton saleroom which they took over from Bonhams' in January.

DEVON County Antiques Fairs (DCAF) are pulling out of the Westpoint Exhibition Centre in Exeter because of costs and the size of the venue.

Devon County Antiques Fairs are currently experiencing technical difficulties with their telephone system but would like the readers of the ATG to know that the fair at Westpoint Exhibition Centre will be going ahead as planned this weekend (July 4-5).

BY 1780, John Trumbull (1756-1843), a budding young artist from Lebanon, Connecticut who had sketched the Revolutionary War, found himself in grave difficulty.

Remarkable for both their size and their original condition, this pair of Italian console tables c,1760 sold for £28,000 Semley Auctioneers of Shaftesbury in Dorset on January 24.

TWO of the West Country’s foremost fine art auctioneers, Bearne’s and Hampton & Littlewood, are to merge to become the biggest business of its kind in the South West.

DEVON County Antiques Fairs, organisers of the largest circuit of antiques and collectors fairs in the Southwest, are cancelling two of their August fairs.

Asked to sell the contents of a holiday home in Sidmouth, Devon auctioneers Potburys were pleased to find this 181/2in (47cm) high cloisonné vase standing in the hearth as a container for fire irons.

This rare medal issued to those involved in the 1916 Easter Rising is up for grabs in the collector’s auction at Plymouth Auction Rooms on February 16.

THOMSON Roddick Scottish Auctions have relocated to a new modern saleroom in Dumfries after holding auctions in Annan for over 100 years and also at the Easterbrook Hall.

EVER since the recognition in 1855 of the potential of a 93-acre site close to the Devon town of Newton Abbot, there’s been a fine tradition of competitive horseracing.

A vast photographic postcard archive depicting Devon in the first half of the 20th century has emerged in Nottinghamshire.

THE new-style collectors’ sales held by Greenslade Taylor Hunt (15% buyer’s premium) at Taunton are proving a winning format, with wide-ranging, briefly catalogued but illustrated lots with low reserves.

HOT on the heels of their event at Arley Hall in Cheshire, Cooper Antiques Fairs move on to two more March fixtures, the more notable being the one held this weekend from March 18 to 20 at Powderham Castle, near Exeter in Devon.

INCLUDED in Potburys’ (12.5% buyer’s premium) sale in Sidmouth, Devon on February 8 and 9 was a 75-lot collection of pictures by the Orientalist painter Charles Robertson (1844-91) consigned from his granddaughter’s estate. They appear to have been the works that remained in the family after the artist’s Godalming studio was sold off following his death from a heart attack aged 47.

THE Westpoint Antique and Collectors Fair will revert to being a two-day event when it kicks off Devon County Antiques Fairs 24-date programme for 2005.

Troika is known for two distinctly different styles – the rough textured wares of which the Cycladic masks are now the most celebrated and the scarcer Brancusi-style smooth monochromatic glazed wares that reveal a rather different aesthetic.