Art and antiques news from 2005

Dreweatt Neate Fine Art have arranged a major private treaty sale to the National Library of Australia, on behalf of a prominent UK family, of a historically important folio of watercolours.

THE Swiss authorities have launched a criminal investigation into scam guide firms and their associated debt recovery agencies.

The emerging class of wealthy Chinese buyers continues to boost the top-end of the art and antiques market in the Far East. So it wasn’t a huge surprise that Sotheby’s set a house record in this autumn’s Hong Kong series, taking HK$850.9m (£61.7m) from seven sales.

Police in Hartley Wintney, Hampshire, are investigating a series of thefts from antiques shops and galleries in the area over the last month, which officers believe are linked.

Nicholas Somers, recently re-elected as chairman of the RICS Fine Art and Antiques Faculty, will make education the focus of his third and final term.

BY ALEX CAPON THE Arts Council is to extend its policy of offering interest-free loans to encourage Contemporary art sales by allowing London galleries to apply for the scheme.

ART donations to public collections could soon be used to partially offset income tax.

The Richmond Gold Cup was one of the great Georgian flat races. Four miles, eight of the finest thoroughbreds of the day, and an ancient course set in the rolling Capability Brown parklands of Aske Hall.

Less than a month after celebrating its 25th anniversary, the Baltimore Summer Antiques Show has been acquired by the managing partners of the Palm Beach Jewelry & Antique Show from Frank Farbenbloom.

A memorial service for Barry Davies, the well-known dealer in Japanese works of art who died in September, will be held on Monday, December 12.

BY IVAN MACQUISTEN Droit de Suite, the much-feared extra levy on art sales, cannot now be introduced in the UK on January 1 next year.

BY IAN MCKAYWRITING about some of the more important items in his peerless private collection of atlases and geographies, the late Lord Wardington said of the Doria Atlas: “I just hope that it... will prove to be as good an investment in the future as I might have made in stocks and shares.”

Setting a new house record for Holloways of Banbury, this enigmatic alabaster urn shot to £170,000 (plus 15% buyer’s premium) on October 18.

For anybody wanting to combine fine art with fine food, the Winter Olympia Fine Art & Antiques Fair are offering a two-course meal and glass of wine at the Leith’s restaurant for £18.75.

BY ALEX CAPON NEW techniques for the scientific ‘fingerprinting’ of ceramics may soon become more practical for the trade to use.

There will be a rare chance to glimpse some of the long unseen areas of Beijing’s Forbidden City on November 28, when Henry Tzu Ng of the World Monuments Fund will deliver a lecture at the Royal Academy in conjunction with their forthcoming exhibition – China: The Three Emperors, 1662-1795.

BY IVAN MACQUISTENROBERT Brooks has been nailing his colours to the mast in more ways than one in the past week.

Neal Auction Co., temporarily displaced from their New Orleans headquarters, will hold their annual Louisiana Purchase sale on December 3-4 in Jackson, Mississippi.

Christie’s, the first Western auction house to establish a representative office in China in 1994, have joined forces with Forever, a newly-established Beijing-based auction house, to hold their first sale in mainland China next month.

When the Troika pottery in Newlyn closed its doors in 1983 its moulds were secured for posterity, not in a local museum or the collection of a Troika devotee but in a garden shed in Northumberland.