Art and antiques news from 2004

This impressive Victorian tortoiseshell and ormolu mantel table clock with three dials for GMT, Paris and New York time, each inscribed Viner London, sold for £26,000 at Woolley and Wallis’s first furniture sale of the year on January 13.

There was healthy competition for the most unusual or best quality entries in London’s December round of five toy sales at Christie’s South Kensington (17.5/10% buyer’s premium) and Bonhams Knightsbridge (17.5/10% buyer’s premium) and some of the highlights are pictured right.

FAR from mourning the demise of the January LAPADA fair, which ran for 13 years at Birmingham’s National Exhibition Centre, the trade seem to have embraced its successor, The National Fine Art and Antiques Fair, which will be launched at this favoured venue from January 28 to February 1.

UK: Auctioneer Paul Dunn, formerly of Atwell Martin near Bath and John Nicholson’s of Fernhurst, has set up on his own in Midhurst, Surrey. South Downs Auctioneers will conduct a wide variety of auctions, including agricultural sales, but also plan regular catalogues of antiques and general furniture and effects.

Fashion giants LVMH have sold their controlling stake in leading French auction house Tajan to Rodart, a company owned by American businesswoman Rodica B. Seward. Financial details of the transaction have not been disclosed.

Measures would not restrict art trade: BRITAIN may soon enjoy one of the most enlightened schemes for keeping key works of art in the country, thanks to the Goodison Review, which has just been published.

UK: The BADA have issued a description of a woman, operating under a number of names, thought to be responsible for a number of thefts at antiques shops in London. Last week, dealers in Kensington Church Street and in the Fulham Road were taken in by the woman, whose approach was most unusual.

SOUTH London organiser Paola Francia-Gardner, who operates as P&A Antiques, is reviving her London Glass Fair which will be held on Sunday March 7 at the Chelsea Village Hotel, Stamford Bridge, Fulham Road, SW6.

CAN a mere movie affect the antiques market? The answer would appear to be yes, at least in New York where, since the release of The Last Samurai, starring Tom Cruise, interest in the ancient Japanese weapons of the Samurai has soared with a significant number of new collectors entering the field declaring they have been inspired by the film.

SINCE the 1970s, the new year’s fairs scene in the capital has always really got underway with Caroline Penman’s West London Antiques and Fine Art Fair, which will be held this week from January 15 to 18 at Kensington Town Hall, W8.

Organisers of Spain’s top antiques fair Feriarte, held last November 22 to 30 at Madrid’s Juan Carlos I Exhibition Centre, report the 200 exhibitors between them sold 6317 items. The gate was 37,147.

Sold at $26,000 (£15,570) as part of the $3.82m (£2.28m) sale of the H.P. Kraus inventory held by Sotheby’s New York on December 4 and 5 was a lavishly illustrated manuscript of 1661 dealing with fireworks, ballistic design and construction.

LONDON: OPENING in the heart of Greenwich this week is a familiar name in a new location, Walpoles, which is located at 18 Nelson Road, London SE10 9JB (Tel: 0208 305 3080).

ESSEX organiser Robert Bailey travelled North at the end of December and saw the new year in at Harrogate where from January 2 to 4 he held his Harrogate Pavilions Antiques and Fine Art Fair.

Until recently, only three Italian micromosaic Chronological Rome round tables with ebony and ormolu bases by the renowned craftsman Michelangelo Barberi (1787-1867) were known. One is in London’s Somerset House Gilbert Collection (purchased from Sotheby’s New York in 1980), one is in St Petersburg’s Hermitage Museum and a third is thought to have been commissioned by Baron Broderick, 6th Viscount Midleton (1791-1863) but its whereabouts remains unknown.

Following the £620 sale of three Wedgwood Ravilious Coronation mugs in November, Tom Delaney of Mallams in Cheltenham recalled seeing a similar mug in a local house – this much rarer example transfer printed with a brick kiln together with a silhouette portrait of Stoke-on-Trent’s most famous son and the inscription Josiah Wedgwood Barlaston 1940 Etruria 1730.

Following his decision to move to France, the silver reference library of long-time London dealer Brand Inglis will be sold by auction in Salisbury at the end of this month. As part of their silver sale on January 28, Woolley & Wallis will offer an enviable working library that has served Mr Inglis for over 40 years.

Clock dealers spot under-catalogued rarities as regulators continue to set the pace in an otherwise stagnant market: ONE of the few elements of the clock trade to see significant forward strides in recent years is the regulator – the name given to those technically interesting and accurate timekeepers used to set the time of the watches and domestic clocks of Regency and Victorian Britain.

Sotheby’s, who have continued the tradition of separate works of art sales rather than combining them with Continental furniture, were actually able to serve up a double helping in December. Their usual mixed-owner offering on the 12th was preceded by a separately catalogued single-owner sale, called Treasures from the Rothschild Collection, of cameos and other antique jewels, gold boxes, silver-gilt, Limoges enamels and other objects made of precious materials.

The Continental Furniture sale at Sotheby’s Bond Street on December 10 proved something of a struggle, just like the furniture elements offered the following day by their King Street competitors. Only half the 241 lots got away, with demand focussed more than ever on the rarest top quality.