Front Page and News

A £100 Lloyd’s Patriotic Fund sword, one of 23 awarded to captains who fought at Trafalgar, sold for $235,000 (£173,000), plus 15% buyer’s premium, to one of six phone bidders competing at James D Julia in Fairfield, Maine, on April 11.

A Spanish oil billed as an early work by Diego Velázquez (1599-1660) sold for €8m (£7m) at the Madrid auctioneers Abalarte on April 25.

An attempt by collecting agencies and copyright organisations to establish a global treaty on Artist’s Resale Right has been met with strong opposition from international trade bodies.

An Old Master marine painting looted by the Nazis during the Warsaw Uprising in 1944 has been returned to Poland.

The overall value of online sales in the art market increased by 15% in the last year, though many buyers remain cautious about purchasing in this way, according to the annual Hiscox Online Art Trade Report.

Online giant eBay is threatening to block Australian customers from buying from overseas firms if the government enacts laws to collect a tax from online sales.

Primary provenanced Arts & Crafts furniture comes up for sale at Mallams in Oxford on May 25.

The German state has appealed against a landmark US court judgment that allowed three US citizens to proceed with a case seeking the restitution of an important collection of medieval devotional art.

Trade bodies line up to make the case for art and antiques sector

Nicholas Mellors Auctioneers in Newark has closed but Newark Antiques will continue to trade.

The Bovey Pottery Company, closed in 1957, would have passed into collecting history without incident had it not been for the ‘Our Gang’ collection of figures.

Estimated at £500-800, a small Old Master painting of Christ wearing the crown of thorns drew spectacular competition at Adam’s of Dublin on April 9. It came from an institution in the Irish capital which the saleroom said was “doing some spring cleaning”. It was given the pick of around 100 paintings.

A new street event in Church Street in London’s Lisson Grove is to take place in September.

Almost exactly a year after setting an auction record for modern British painter Sir Cedric Morris (1889-1982), the Henry Adams saleroom has done it again.

Westminster City Council has put its weight behind the art and antiques dealers of London’s Church Street with a series of initiatives designed to encourage growth of the sector.

A coalition of California auction houses fighting to reword a new law governing the sale of autographed collectables has cleared its first legal hurdle.

Auctioneers and vendors are quickly discovering that Europe’s country houses, furnished with the routine period objects that no longer generate great excitement, can occasionally yield valuable souvenirs of a colonial past.

Former Bonhams and Christie’s specialist Mark Wilkinson is to join Sworders to launch new specialist sales at the Essex auction house. Wilkinson spent over 30 years at Christie’s and led its ‘interiors’ auctions at South Kensington.

Christie’s is to open a new Los Angeles premises this month in Beverly Hills to bolster its presence on the west coast of the US.

The art and antiques trade is taking its Brexit concerns directly to government with the submission of a series of policy documents asking that art market interests are recognised.