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FRANCE: CHRISTIE’S France will start the new Millennium by relocating from Rue Paul-Baudry to new premises on Avenue Matignon, just off the Champs-Elysées and some 500 yards from Sotheby’s base on Rue du Faubourg St-Honoré.

UK: CUSTOMS and Excise have closed a tax loophole leaving UK art dealers with a hefty VAT bill to pay in future.

UK: THE table was hotly contested by top London dealers at Ewbank’s rooms in Send, Surrey on December 9, 1999, with Fulham Road dealer Michael Lipitch emerging as the top bidder at £58,000.

EU: BRITAIN’S opponents on the droit de suite issue were in retreat last week with the emergence of telling evidence from France and Germany (the two main champions of artists’ resale rights) that the levy is both damaging to art markets and of little benefit to living artists.

UK: THE exceptional levels of demand recently seen for American pictures impacted on the London salerooms on the evening of December 14 when Bonhams achieved a record £1.4m for Richmond Hill in the Summer of 1862 by the Hudson River School painter Jasper Francis Cropsey (1823-1900).

FRANCE: THIS anonymous oil-on-paper portrait by Annibale or Agostino Carracci sold 'for around £60,000' at Virginie Pitchal’s Mirror of the Soul exhibition at her Left Bank gallery.

EU: THE FATE of the UK’s flourishing Contemporary and Modern art trade hung in the balance last week after the Government had continued its steadfast opposition to the introduction of droit de suite by frustrating an attempt to push through the directive at the Internal Market Council meeting.

UK: THE Professional Football Association was the successful bidder for L.S. Lowry’s crowd scene Going to the Match at Sotheby’s London last Wednesday, setting the record for the highest auction price for a Modern British painting at £1.75m

UK: TWO-thirds of the items recommended for export licence deferrals by the Export Review Committee during 1998/9 ended up being sold abroad anyway, their annual report reveals.

US: AT Christie’s East in New York on November 27, in a sale which reinforced 20th century design as a major market mover, this moulded plywood sculpture by Ray and Charles Eames, dated 1943 and 3ft 11/2in (95cm) high, established a world record price of $330,000 (£206,250) for the designers, selling to a specialist Eames collector.

UK: International bidders tuned into proceedings at Canterbury Auction Galleries on October 2, 1999 in the prospect of acquiring one of the earliest ship-to-shore receivers, illustrated right, manufactured in 1908 by the founding father of commercial radio communication – Guglielmo Marconi.

UK: PARIS salons were well known for flatulence in conversation. After each manned flight of giant balloons from the gardens of Versailles during the late 18th and 19th centuries, young men who wished to sound like scientists would earnestly debate whether hydrogen gas or hot air allowed the better flight.

UK: THE chance purchase of a book from a fellow exhibitor at Olympia has led to an exciting and profitable discovery for 20th Century at Olympia dealer Peter Edwards of Edwards Barany.

UK: A RARE catch indeed, the most important painting of its period in a British private collection, Botticelli’s Virgin Adoring the Christ Child, c.1490-1500, pictured right, has been acquired by the National Gallery of Scotland from the 10th Earl of Wemyss and March, who was about to sell it to America.

UK: AN international mix of private collectors, dealers and institutions turned out to bid for an old and celebrated collection of European glass formed by the late Dr. Otto Dettmers of Bremen when it went under the hammer at Sotheby’s in London last week on November 23.

UK: PHOTOGRAPHIC proof of provenance lends enormous wings to the object concerned, and lot 1 at Phillips’ (15/10 per cent buyer’s premium) sale of English and Continental furniture in London on October 12 was just such a case.

UK: IT MAY have been a mahogany wine cooler, but did its massive proportions and one-time residence in St Alban’s Cathedral suggest that it had formerly been used as a christening bath for babies rather than for beverages?

UK: CAMPAIGNERS want all dealers across the country to act now against the proposed Kent County Council Bill which could tie the trade up in red tape and discourage buyers.

FRANCE: PIERRE Lellouche, député (MP) for the Drouot district of Paris, has called for the suppression of import VAT on art and a large cut in the rate of droit de suite, the artists’ resale levy.

UK: EXAMPLES of the laminated-birch long chair designed by Marcel Breuer for the Isokon Furniture Company in 1936 have become a fairly common sight at London sales of modern design icons but are perhaps less familiar in the provinces.