News

THIS week sees the announcement of two new auction houses for the West Midlands, the first based in Stourbridge, near Birmingham, the second in Newport, Shropshire.

Any dealer, collector or curator would love to get hold of the ultimate reference catalogue of Victorian artistic design, especially if it was bound in gilt stamped red morocco and velvet housed in a purpose-built satinwood cabinet complete with four volumes of jury reports and a case of five medals.

At the end of the morning session of Sotheby’s Garden Statuary sale at Billingshurst, the National Trust took over the rostrum to offer such items for gardening enthusiasts as an avenue of 40 young limes from the Trust’s nursery in Cheshire, home visits from Trust gardening experts and so on, but the piece of trade interest was a scrapbook kept by Vita Sackville-West at Sissinghurst donated by her son Nigel Nicolson.

MALCOLM HORD has announced that he is to retire as chief executive of LAPADA, the Association of Art and Antique Dealers, at the end of May next year.

FRANCE: Francis Briest, France’s leading auctioneer of modern and contemporary art, is to join up with the modern art dealers and booksellers Artcurial (acquired by Nicolas Orlowski from Oréal in 1999).

France’s Syndicat National des Antiquaires (National Dealers' Association) has called on the French government to reject the Unidroit convention, which enforces strict rules on the restitution of stolen art.

A NEW survey has just been published showing how much better fine period furniture has proved as an investment compared to the stock market and property over the past 30 years.