UK

UK: Hamptons’ sale of Antiquarian & Modern Books and Maps at 11am on Thursday, February 13 will be a sad occasion both for the auctioneers and local book buyers. For years Thorpe’s of Guildford, under the late Charles Traylen, have been a familiar face at Hamptons auctions, and for much longer local bibliophiles have spent many a happy hour in the first floor barn of a room at the shop.

STRANGE to associate the HMV label in any way with fishing, but one of the highlights of Holt’s March 6 sale at the Duke of York’s Barracks, Chelsea, will be this rare copy of Tarpomania – the madness of fishing, written in 1908 by the industrialist and founder of His Master’s Voice, Eldridge Reeves Johnson.

FOR one day only on Sunday, February 16 the London Marriott Hotel in Grosvenor Square will be a magnet for serious collectors of antique arms and armour when The London Park Lane Arms Fair celebrates its 20th anniversary.

“SELECTIVE” can mean “poor” when auctioneers apply the word to bidding and the downward spiral of brown furniture prices has emphasised this. But it was an accurate enough description of bidding on furniture offered among the 1200 lots at the Clifton rooms, for when there was a piece of unusual quality it sold well.

MEDIA star and Deco expert Eric Knowles officially cut the ribbon when popular Oxfordshire antiques centre The Swan at Tetsworth unveiled its new Art Deco Showroom on January 13.

English glass doesn’t generally compete with Continental for price, so anyone just looking at the top results from Sotheby’s mixed-owner auction held the day before their Japanese museum dispersal might have got the erroneous impression that home-produced material had played a low-key role.

LARGE quantities of antique pewter are rarely seen at auction these days but even so, the supply of ordinary material is hardly met with rampant demand. As such, prices were kept down for the majority of the 122 pewter lots that Bonhams had impressively gathered for their Chester sale on 17 January.

ENERGETIC Essex organiser Robert Bailey has been increasingly active on the marketing front and received praise for the gate at his recent Tatton Park fair, following the targeted mailing of nearly 4000 home-owners.

A £5600 National Art Collections Fund grant has enabled the Bate Collection of Musical Instruments at Oxford University to keep a handsome Baroque trumpet with a legend attached.

CLARION Events, organisers of the Olympia Fairs, introduce a new initiative at their Spring Olympia to further emphasise their conviction that presentation and creative stand display in a no-dateline context are the way forward.

VETERAN organiser Donald Bayliss, who put together his first fair in the 1960s and now operates out of Ludlow as Continuity Fairs, is launching a new event in mid-Wales in the Spring.

LATEST British dealers to cross the Atlantic in search of American sales are Bond Street’s Partridge Fine Arts who, until this Saturday, January 25, hold a selling exhibition at the New York premises of art dealers Dickinson Roundell.

ORGANISERS Gay Hutson and Angela Wynn, who run the successful 20/21 British Art Fair, had fairly modest expectations when they launched their Art on paper Fair at London’s Royal College of Art four years ago but, as you will see at its fifth staging from January 30 to February 2, it has very much found a niche in the crowded London fairs scene.

The easel that was used to create some of the most celebrated nursery images of the 20th century will be going under the hammer later on this month.

BUSINESS was not bad but security was even better at the North Cotswolds Antiques Fair held in a maarquee at Stanway House on January 11 and 12.

THE sad plight of silver is as well known as the boom in all Arts and Crafts pieces – what happens when the two come together was the question at Sworders’ sale when this pair of plated candlesticks, right, were offered.

ON December 10 Cambridge auctioneers Cheffins (15% buyer’s premium) offered the residual contents from the home of amateur painter and gallery owner Olive Cook, whose early friendships with Henry Moore and Eric Ravilious helped hone her artistic eye.

CHRISTIE’S have unveiled some major changes for their 20th century decorative arts policy in Europe. The auction house have closed their King Street department and are concentrating all their London activities in decorative arts at South Kensington. They also want to develop and raise the profile of this field in France with regular dedicated auctions in Paris under specialist Sonja Ganne.

Despite the recent media interest in the routine sale of Royal gifts through household staff and approved dealers, the practice of flogging Crown chattels is nothing new. More official and intimate material of royal provenance has buoyed the market for decades, if not centuries.

High quality watches are still in demand but condition is all-important to today’s discerning collectors. At a sale devoted entirely to watches at Christie’s King Street back on November 26, this gold chronograph pocket watch, right, by Louis Audemars c.1870 took £40,000.