Doubt over venue of Cotswolds fair
Details of next year’s Cotswolds Art & Antiques Dealers’ Association (CADA) fair are uncertain as works on its historic venue, Blenheim Palace (pictured above), have been announced.
The event has traditionally been held in The Orangery and Campaign Rooms of the palace. However, works are due to start on the roof of The Orangery early in 2020 with no known completion date. A time and place for next year’s fair are to be announced following a search for new venues by the CADA Committee.
For its eighth edition, which took place from February 21-24, the fair was forced to change from dates in April to February due to schedule conflicts at the palace. It typically hosts around 30 dealers, including members of CADA and specially invited guests.
Raiders ‘tunnel into’ jewel dealer
The Metropolitan Police’s Flying Squad are appealing for help to find a gang of criminals who reportedly tunnelled into jewellery dealer George Attenborough & Son on Fleet Street.
Officers were called shortly before 2am on Monday, March, 25 and an investigation has been launched.
However, the Met said at present “we are not disclosing details of what was stolen”.
The Sun reported that the thieves had dug a tunnel to get inside the building but police have not confirmed this. Anyone with information should call police via 101 quoting CAD 451/mar25. To remain anonymous, call Crimestoppers on 0800 555 111.
George Attenborough & Son declined to comment.
Beatles auction to be Liverpool event
One of the lots at the Julien’s Liverpool auction is John Lennon’s owned and signed album Yesterday And Today (1966), a US First State ‘Butcher’ album prototype stereo example. Julien’s says it is “believed to be the only one of these bearing three Beatles signatures”. It is estimated at $160,000-180,000.
Beatlemania is coming to Liverpool. Well, it never went away, but this fresh wave of interest in the ever-popular Fab Four is in the form of an annual auction held by an American saleroom that is now to be held on Merseyside.
Julien’s Auctions of Los Angeles has staged its memorabilia sale stateside but on May 9 it is coming across the pond to The Beatles Story museum in the city where it all began, offering items including a Yesterday And Today ‘Butcher’ album owned by John Lennon.
It is planned to make this a yearly event.
The firm will also partner once again with the museum for a Beatles and Merseybeat Memorabilia Day in Liverpool the day afterwards, on May 10 from noon-8pm, when fans and collectors are invited to bring in their Beatles memorabilia to be appraised by the experts for free at The Beatles Story’s Fab4 Cafe on the Royal Albert Dock.
Shifting Sands: new marketing role
Bonhams has hired Christie’s former marketing supremo Marc Sands. He was responsible for a number of high-profile marketing campaigns at Christie’s during his four-year tenure including the auction of Leonardo da Vinci’s Salvator Mundi and the Rockefel ler collection.
Sands joins Bonhams as chief marketing officer in London and will be responsible for marketing, communications, events and customer services. He has more than 20 years’ experience in the marketing industry including at the Tate and the Guardian Media Group.
Oscar Wilde first makes five figures
A good first edition copy of Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest, published by Leonard Smithers in 1899, sold at £19,700 in a March 23 sale at Lacy Scott & Knight (20% buyer’s premium) in Bury St Edmunds.
One of 100 signed large paper firsts of Wilde’s best-known book, it came in its original cloth gilt boards, although it showed some defects including darkening to the endpapers.
Dealers’ stock on offer in three sales
Golding Young is selling the stock and collections of Gavin and Ross Burns. Their Stamford shop is shown here.
Lincolnshire auction house Golding Young & Mawer is to sell the stock and personal collections of Stamford antiques dealers Gavin Burns and his son Ross following their retirement in December 2018.
The consignment of more than 800 unreserved lots, to be sold across three Golding Young sale venues weekly from April 24, features some of the great makers of 17th, 18th and 19th century English furniture.
Many are market fresh and included will be at least two sets of chairs by Gillows, a George III mahogany longcase clock by Thomas Rayment of Stamford and a Regency rosewood ‘scissor-action’ card table attributed to George Oakley.
The sale is titled The St George’s Collection after the Grade II-listed 17th century building in Stamford’s St George’s Square that served as the Burns shop and showroom for 45 years.
It is split between Golding Young’s Lincolnshire salerooms in Bourne, Grantham and Lincoln.
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In Numbers
90
The number of years since the publication of Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own.
The Spring Decorative Antiques & Textile Fair (April 9-14) pays tribute to it with a special display, A Room of Her Own, offering a spin-off of classic English style with an air of ‘Bloomsbury Set boho-chic’.
