UK

UK: Doubt still hangs over the future of goods consigned to troubled west London auctioneers Academy of Ealing.

EXPERT evidence on the Kent County Council Bill will go into select committee session for an unexpected third week on Tuesday, November 7 as almost every clause in the proposed Bill is closely examined.

CLARION Events, organisers of the Olympia Fine Art and Antiques Fairs, assured the Antiques Trade Gazette last week that exhibitors at the June Olympia need not fear that the summer fair would be vastly enlarged in 2002.

As demonstration that one should always be alert outside one’s narrow field, it is worth citing the Civil War piece, pictured, that was offered in a Jewellery sale at Phillips London on October 3.

Once again torrential rain and flooding has wreaked havoc across the country causing disruption to the antiques trade.

UK: The most comprehensive and perhaps the finest collection of early silver spoons to appear on the market since the 1960s went under the hammer at Woolley and Wallis in Salisbury last Wednesday (October 25).

The most startling result produced by the Allan Cuthbertson sale, Bonhams, London 3-4 October was an eight times estimate bid of £34,000 from Andrew Edmonds for a five volume set of The Caricature Magazine, or Mirror of Mirth.

UK: ANDREW Morris, chief executive of Earls Court/Olympia in London and head of the company’s exhibitions organising arm, Clarion Events, has revealed that a thorough review of his art and antiques division will be unveiled in February.

LONDON: Highlight of the German and Austrian series from the Marvin & Janet Fishman Collection was Egon Schiele’s oil on canvas Portrait of the Art Dealer Guido Arnot, 4ft 7in x 3ft 7in (1.40 x 1.09m), signed and dated 1918 which sold at Sotheby’s in London for £6.5m (plus premium), more than twice its top estimate.

The market for 20th century German art proved dramatically selective last week when the much-promoted Marvin & Janet Fishman Collection came under the hammer at Sotheby’s on the evening of October 18.

In these days of raging prices for anything remotely decorative in the world of antiques, it is not often that you find something early, unusual and pleasing to the eye for little more than £500.

UK: Scholars probably know less about the makers of 18th century caddies and knife boxes than the little they have gleaned thus far regarding the makers of Georgian furniture.

UK: Phillips have announced the closure of two more of their provincial salerooms, Guildford and Ringwood, as part of their ongoing and extensive restructuring programme.

UK: ART & Antiques on the Internet is the title of a one-day conference being staged at the Royal Institution on Thursday October 26 by the Institute of Art and Law and the RICS

UK: The unexpected crowd puller at Lyon & Turnbull’s 509-lot sale on October 8 was this Wanli period (1573-1619) Chinese blue and white ewer estimated at £400-500

LONDON: Renaissance period combined scaphe dial and astrolabe made by Arsenius of Louvain, dated 1563.

UK: THE Thames-side meadows at Christopher Gibbs’ Manor House in Oxfordshire contained a number of pieces of classical statuary with important provenances, but none proved so valuable as this unheralded stone model of a recumbent cow.

UK: The first celebrity house sale of the new millennium took place last week near Clifton Hampden in Oxfordshire, where noted aesthete and furnisher to the stars Christopher Gibbs was clearing his Victorian manor house under the auspices of Christie’s.

UK: DEVON dealers J. Collins & Son are well known for their stock of functional period furniture, but looking through their new catalogue of recent acquisitions most would be hard pressed to spot the exact function of the extraordinary piece pictured here.

UK: TOMMASO Zanzotto, chairman of Stocklight, which owns the Bernard J. Shapero Rare Books recently acquired Bloomsbury Book Auctions, has vowed to keep the two companies totally separate.