2011

SALISBURY auctioneers Woolley & Wallis saw two more lots make over £1m last week.

BONHAMS are to work with Cranfield University in Bedfordshire with the aim of making new technological advancements for authenticating porcelain more accessible for use in the art market.

Just as traders in Portobello were celebrating victory in the Admiral Vernon dispute, they heard that the Good Fairy arcade across the road had been closed as the freeholders, Carmac Portobello Ltd, had gone into administration.

VOTES can now be cast for the Object of the Year by visiting LAPADA's website at www.lapada-object-of-the-year.com

THOMAS Grant Dixon formed his Worcester collection from 1940-70. This discerning collector was a great friend of H. Rissik Marshall, the famed Worcester collector and author whose collection now resides in the Ashmolean at Oxford.

STALLHOLDERS throughout Portobello’s arcades planned to don ‘Marion’ masks last Saturday in a mass protest over the latest turn of events in the market.

CHINESE works of art dominated this month's Asian sales series in London but among the most successful auctions last week was Bonhams' dispersal of the second part of the Edward Wrangham (1928-2009) collection.

THE Australian art and antiques industry has formed its own version of the British Art Market Federation following what it calls “several years of uncertainty in the Australian art market”.

SOTHEBY’S made a profit in the first three months of 2011 – that profit may have been only $2.4m, but it compares with a loss of $2.2m for the same period last year.

THE latest sales of Contemporary art in New York produced some solid results, but buyers were selective and not all the projected highlights fulfilled vendors’ expectations.

THE Fifth Annual Art Investment Conference will take place on May 27 at the London Business School and this year’s theme is Art Investment in the New Information Age. It will focus on the impact of increasing transparency on the global art market and how to adapt.

THE contstant jockeying for position in the Australian art and antiques auctions market continues with the appointment of Mark Fraser as chairman of Bonhams Australia with immediate effect.

IN a series of high-profile auctions in New York that saw an underperforming run of Impressionist and Modern art sales, the eye-catching price of the week by some distance came for a 19th century historical genre painting.

"The best piece of furniture sold in Shropshire in a decade," enthused Shrewsbury auctioneer Jeremy Lamond of Halls.

SOTHEBY'S will sell the earliest rules of club football on July 14. They are part of a lot which includes the historic archive of the world’s oldest football club, Sheffield FC.

THE day after bullion prices peaked, thieves broke into an antiques centre in Cardiff and escaped with a haul of antique silver valued at thousands of pounds.

Makers do not manipulate deals, show’s boss tells ATG. The makers of the BBC television show The Antiques Road Trip have written to ATG defending the format of the programme.

HUGE quantities of antique silver and gold were scrapped last week as precious metal prices hit record highs.

ANTIQUES fairs will be able to continue at Swinderby for some time, despite the site’s prospective development as a gravel pit.

SOTHEBY’S latest Asian series represented an all-time high for the firm in Hong Kong.