South-east England

UK: WITH the trade’s rumour mill in overdrive over the possible closure of Sotheby’s Billingshurst, the decision by a West Sussex businessman to open a new auction house Latimers (15 per cent buyer’s premium) in Horsham, barely 10 miles away from Summers Place, could well prove to be timely.

THE parliamentary committee assessing the merits of the Kent Bill have called on the Government to introduce public legislation to cover the whole country instead.

DETAILS of the planned development of Sotheby’s UK salerooms announced in last week’s Antiques Trade Gazette are unlikely to become clear before mid-December at the earliest.

DEALERS in the Dover area have contacted the Antiques Trade Gazette to complain about a local police initiative asking them to fingerprint their customers.

UK: FOUR weeks of expert evidence and deliberation has ended with the Parliamentary Select Committee needing the chairman’s casting vote to keep the Kent Bill from being thrown out.

EXPERT evidence on the Kent County Council Bill will go into select committee session for an unexpected third week on Tuesday, November 7 as almost every clause in the proposed Bill is closely examined.

Once again torrential rain and flooding has wreaked havoc across the country causing disruption to the antiques trade.

UK: Phillips have announced the closure of two more of their provincial salerooms, Guildford and Ringwood, as part of their ongoing and extensive restructuring programme.

UK: THE Thames-side meadows at Christopher Gibbs’ Manor House in Oxfordshire contained a number of pieces of classical statuary with important provenances, but none proved so valuable as this unheralded stone model of a recumbent cow.

UK: The first celebrity house sale of the new millennium took place last week near Clifton Hampden in Oxfordshire, where noted aesthete and furnisher to the stars Christopher Gibbs was clearing his Victorian manor house under the auspices of Christie’s.

UK: English or Continental? That was the question specialist dealers and collectors were asking themselves of this mid-16th century brass candlestick which turned up at Sotheby’s oak sale at Billingshurst, Sussex on September 12 and 14

UK: What is arguably the definitive collection of small teapots could prove to be a ‘nice little urner’ for a new regional auction house.

AS THE Tour de France came to an end, this 1870 Eugène Meyer de Paris Vélocipède sold on its top estimate for £26,000 (plus 15 per cent buyer’s premium) at Brooks’ Summer Vintage sale at the National Motor Museum in Beaulieu on July 27.

A House of Commons Committee has been appointed to examine the Kent County Council Bill in detail.

UK: PAUL Henry’s A Village in Connemara which sold for £58,000 at Edgar Horns in Eastbourne on July 12. The 16 x 24in (41 x 61cm) oil on canvas is fully signed and still bears an original paper label on the stretcher with title and artist, though the frame is a replacement.

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: 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: AFTER 16 years of working at Dreweatt Neate to develop their ceramics department, Mark Law, the Berkshire auctioneers’ ceramics specialist, has left the partnership and has joined Andrew Hilton at the nearby Reading firm Special Auction Services.

UK: POOR old Neville Chamberlain. He always takes the blame for all but delivering up the British people to Adolf Hitler, when perhaps he should really be seen merely as one of those Edwardian throwbacks like Eden who believed, quite rightly, that there was no aspect of a fascist dictatorship which could threaten the lifestyle of the English upper classes.