UK

AS a regular exhibitor at that most traditional of fairs, the Chelsea Antiques Fair, and after enjoying a most successful debut at New York’s Winter Antiques Show earlier this year, there is no doubt that European folk art specialist Robert Young is very much an antique dealer.

Although all the other sales that used to be held at Sotheby’s Billingshurst have now moved to their Olympia rooms*, the one notable exception is their twice-yearly auctions of garden statuary and architectural items. These continue to be held in West Sussex where they can benefit from Billingshurst’s location for a stylish viewing in their country house grounds.

After trading for only six months, Fieldings Auctioneers, based in Stourbridge, West Midlands have won a regional business award. They were nominated by the Black Country Chamber of Commerce for the Best New Business, Service Sector in their first annual New Business Awards (2001-2002).

A FORMER Cambridge University student who plundered priceless historical book collections, stealing works valued at over £1m, has been jailed for four years.

THE Dutch Ambassador welcomed British and Dutch dealers to a reception at the London embassy on April 24 to celebrate the signing of a formal agreement between two leading trade associations.

Three Lincolnshire auctioneers are setting aside their competitive differences and collaborating on a week-long series of sales in the county.

SOLD at £1200 to Jarndyce in this sale of photographs, historical documents, autographs and ephemera was an 1838 manuscript of The Student, a play by Frederick Bate.

Royal Doulton and Moorcroft collectors are always in abundance at these sales in the heart of the Potteries, and if their specialisms within their subjects sometimes make for hard going at the rostrum, the increasing demand for Royal Albert pieces was well catered for.

Over the last six months Amersham Auction Rooms have reported an increase in prices for ceramics and collectables in contrast to static or falling bids placed for furniture.

AUCTIONEER Andrew Hartley has been holding biannual toy sales for a decade but the last few years has seen them grow in strength. Totals have risen steadily from around £40,000 several years ago to the £66,000 mark achieved at their most recent 650-lot sale which boasted a 95 per cent take-up.

THE British Museum is being advised to sell off up to a fifth of its ‘spare’ exhibits to raise funds. The museum is already being forced to sell off valuable property and shed up to 180 jobs – including vital conservation posts – to stave off bankruptcy a year before its 250th anniversary.

ROBERT Lenkiewicz, one of Britain’s most controversial artists, has been burgled for the third time in five weeks in what is widely believed to be a ‘stolen to order’ theft.

“It was like the 1970s all over again,” said John Benjamin of Woolley and Wallis, describing the breadth of quality at his jewellery sale in Salisbury on April 24-25.

This marquetry panel, right, was one of the distinguishing features of a much-altered kingwood bonheur du jour which highlighted Dreweatt Neate’s (15 per cent buyer’s premium) furniture and works of art sale on March 27.

One of only a few thousand produced, a 1935 Dinky Coachcraft, streamlined van, led this specialist toy sale in Sussex at Wallis and Wallis on 18 March.

One of the earliest known portraits of Sir Robert Walpole, England’s first Prime Minister, is to be sold at Cheffin’s Cambridge salerooms on May 14, as part of the collection of Cambridge academic Sir John Plumb.

WEST London’s The Old Cinema in Chiswick, billed by its owner Martin Hanness as the capital’s only antiques department store, is undergoing a major makeover not far off a century after it was opened in 1910.

EUROPE’s leading showground events organisers DMG Antiques Fairs have been oiling the wheels of their fixtures, and it is much appreciated at Ardingly where their fair has been going from strength to strength.

KENT rug dealer Desmond North has been successfully holding “rug-ins” for the past 30 years and on that wisest of maxims, if it ain’t broke don’t fix it, he continues this dealing tradition twice a year and over the Bank Holiday weekend of May 4 to 6 holds his Spring Rug-In.

HAMPSHIRE organiser Valerie Sleeney of Grandma’s Attic Fairs holds the first staging of the year of her flagship event at The Pavilion Ballroom, Bournemouth on April 27 and 28.