News

UK: THE Museums and Galleries Commission has launched Cornucopia an initiative which aims to provide a complete picture of the wealth of UK museum collections.

FRANCE: THE dispersal of the Paul Amos collection of French medals, under the auspices of expert Sabine Bourgey at Piasa (10.854 per cent buyer’s premium) in Paris on March 8 represents an event for which we have to go back some years to find anything comparable.

GERMANY: SOME of the most unusual and fascinating military vehicles ever built are to be auctioned on May 15 when the contents of the Historical and Technical Museum of Nümbrecht are sold off.

UK: CHRISTIE’S chairman Lord Hindlip has declared himself more excited about the prospect of selling the £20m plus collection of Nathaniel and Albert von Rothschild on July 8 than about any other sale in his 36 years at the auction house.

UK: WITH more than 500 dealers and a vast array of stock there are bound to be varying fortunes, but on the whole the Spring Antiques For Everyone fair at Birmingham’s National Exhibition Centre from April 8 to 11 again proved itself a fair to be reckoned with.

G.E. Sworder & Sons, Stansted Mountfitchet, March 16 Buyer’s premium: 10 per cent UK: "CERAMICS and collectables are usually well received by the trade, but at this 1000-lot sale they were met with a muted response, silver and jewellery were eagerly sought after while the furniture met with a keen response from trade and private buyers,” said auctioneer Guy Schooling.

The flying logbook of Fred Shaw, an RCAF navigator, received quite a lot of media publicity when Sotheby’s Sussex announced its sale, because of a suggestion that it sheds light on the disappearance of bandleader Glenn Miller in December 1944.