UK

THOUGH it might no longer be the place where an international vendor would choose to sell a £20m Picasso or Van Gogh, London last week enhanced its reputation as a revenue for selling major-name Impressionist, Modern and Contemporary art with a string of major results at Sotheby’s and Christie’s evening sales.

UK: THE Internet has failed to generate any significant volume of sales for London’s art dealers in the past year, reports the members’ survey for 1999/2000 by the Society of London Art Dealers.

UK: CYPHERS can be frustrating things, whether one is using the word to denote a code for secret writing or, as is more often the case in the antiques world, some ingenious arrangement of conjoined initials.

UK: LEADING the auction at £100,000 (plus premium) was this 27in (68.5cm) high early 18th century, two-section Saxon covered goblet from Dresden which is applied with 12 silver-gilt oval medallions of Roman emperors and was discovered in a cellar at Schloss Hinnenburg, in northern Germany.

THE Booker, the Baftas, the Brits, and now the Baca; the inaugural British Antiques and Collectables Awards finally joined the ranks of other UK arts prize-giving bashes with applause and aplomb at Grosvenor House on June 20.

UK: WHAT difference does provenance actually make to the price of an antique? The answer is apparently none at all in the case of the shortest lived and least productive factory in the history of English porcelain.

UK: THE panel looking into whether UK collections and institutions should return Nazi looted art to its original owners or compensate them has unveiled the criteria and procedures which will determine its judgements.

UK: Hawk-eyed Neil Froggatt spotted the true worth of an antique treasure during a routine household evaluation.

UK: The Passage through parliament of the Kent County Council and Medway Bills – designed to regulate the trade in all forms of second-hand goods in the county – has been held up until the autumn.

Memories of high royal days on the Cowes riviera were recalled on the Isle of Wight when a relatively plain Victorian mahogany dressing table surfaced at Shanklin Auction Rooms on June 6.

UK: AGNEW’S have strengthened their commitment to contemporary art with the appointment of Mark Adams as director in charge of the contemporary department.

UK: ONE of a set of twelve 16th century Limoges enamelled plates, which were offered for sale by the Manchester auctioneers Capes Dunn during a special sale on May 25 conducted from the Assembly Rooms in Lytham to promote their regional office on the Fyld coast.

UK: PRICE GUIDE publishers Miller’s have issued a shortlist of contenders for the British Antiques and Collectables Awards, a new scheme which is being run for the first time this year, in association with the BBC Homes & Antiques Magazine.

UK: GIANT knives of the frontier period hold a special place in the heart of American collectors, and the late 19th century example by one of the leading Sheffield makers of Bowie-style knives for the American market – Brookes and Crookes – was eagerly contested by US bidders at Martyn Rowe’s Truro salerooms on May 26.

Art dealers Simon C. Dickinson have made a bold new incursion into the luxury market by adding a jewellery arm to their existing Old Master and Impressionist and Modern business, which made sales of £100m last year.

UK: THE PHENOMENAL success enjoyed in the English speaking world by J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter... books has been expensively reflected in the antiquarian, or rather secondhand book world, where (even in the high priced modern firsts market) the prices being asked for Harry the First are almost unbelievable.

UK: The Kent County Council and Medway Bills, which will regulate the trade in art and antiques in the county, are to go forward to the committee stage after their second reading in the House of Commons on May 17.

UK: OVER half the images in the Craven collection of photographs offered by Bearne’s in Exeter on May 6 were by William, 2nd Earl of Craven.

UK: THE romance, expertise and astonishing prices at the Benacre sale came together when this pair of candelabra, above, were put up by Sotheby’s.

UK: A George II Irish mahogany centre table, 2ft 8in (81cm) wide, which featured at Bristol Auction Rooms on May 16, attracted interest from an Irish dealer who went to £25,000 (plus 10 per cent buyer’s premium), despite speculation by the auctioneer that the edging may have been altered and the top re-finished.