London

DEALERS at Grays antiques centre have been told that disruption from the next phase of the Crossrail project at Bond Street will last three months longer than previously thought.

THE latest round of Russian art sales in London put in a consistent performance as auctioneers’ totals again benefited from a series of £1m-plus prices. Demand, however, remained selective with selling rates noticeably patchy.

DEALERS at Grays antiques centre in central London are fearing further damage to business as the massive Crossrail project at Bond Street enters a new stage this summer.

Supporters of the Save The Portobello Market Campaign called for a referendum on a directly elected mayor for Kensington and Chelsea.

ED Vaizey, Minister for Culture, Communications and Creative Industries, has appointed London art dealer Lowell Libson as a member of the Reviewing Committee on the Export of Works of Art and Objects of Cultural Interest.

A house clearer has won a High Court battle to regain possession of a pair of medieval embroideries thought to be worth millions after a longstanding dispute with a fine art specialist.

THE latest Modern British art sale at Christie's in London set a series of new benchmarks for the sector.

THE organisers of the UK’s largest contemporary art fair, Frieze, are launching two new events for 2012.

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.

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 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.

BACK in the 1980s, on the back of the Lalique boom, there used to be fairly regular offerings of scent bottles at auction in London.

DEALERS at Portobello Road were celebrating a dramatic victory last week after the council rejected a planning application which campaigners said would have been “devastating” for the antiques market.

ISLAMIC art dominated the London sales agenda last week with the first of the two bi-annual series of auctions devoted to this field in the capital.

THE London Islamic sales week got of to a ‘magic carpet’ start when Morton and Eden held an 81-lot sale devoted to the rarest Islamic coins.

THE organisers of Asian Art in London have announced that this year, for the first time, they will allow dealers from outside the UK to take part.

PRINCE Charles's interest in all things green has been boosting the antiques industry at the Ideal Home Show.

AMONG the 30,000 papers released by the Margaret Thatcher Archive Trust earlier this month – and now available to the public at the Churchill Archive Centre – is a brief note on antiques fairs.

SOUTH London saleroom Rosebery’s of West Norwood had to be evacuated on Wednesday, March 23 after a client left a Second World War bomb brought in for valuation at the front desk.