Art and antiques news from 2000

UK: The absence of a buyer’s premium at Nigel Ward & Co’s sale on November 18 at Ewyas Harold Memorial Hall near Pontrilas, Hereford was certainly a factor in the substantial price attained for this Charles II pewter candlestick, 7in (18cm) by an unknown Bristol maker.

As chairman of a discussion panel at the annual conference of the Appraisers Association of America in New York, MARK BRIDGE, found that the Internet is not the villain it was painted a year ago. He reports on the current attitudes to on-line valuation in the USA and the views of auctioneers experimenting with online bidding.

This Regency giltwood chair may have been one of the largest hearing aids ever built, but it was intended to serve the same purpose as the smallest, mobile device: disguising the disablity and sparing the dignity of the listener.

“Is the live auction dead?” was the challenging question before a panel discussion at the annual conference of the Appraisers Association of America in New York in which four major regional auction houses took part.

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

FRANCE: A French judge ruled on November 20 that Yahoo must take steps to prevent French Web-browsers from accessing sales of Nazi memorabilia on their American auction site.

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.

Sotheby’s have instigated a dramatic ‘restructure’ of their company after announcing net losses of $183m for the first nine months of this year.

FRANCE: POLICE today appealed for help in tracing up to 100 bronzes and other antiques which were stolen in a £1m burglary at a Paris Gallery in June 1998.

UK: Lot 1098 at the Leominster rooms of Brightwells auctioneers offered the clock trade the chance to purchase this rare late 18th century bracket clock by Thomas Berry of Ormskirk, 2ft 7in by 17in (79 x 43cm).

Sold at Sotheby’s, London sale (October 12-13) for £6500 was a rare example of a printed version of one of the letters exchanged by Napoleon and the Sherif of Mekkah, Ghalib ibn Musa’id, at the time of the French invasion of Egypt in 1798-99.

UK: The Voyage of H.M.S Beagle is a summary of fauna discovered by Charles Darwin on his travels through the Southern Hemisphere from 1831-6, and became crucial to the formulation of his brutal creed: “survival of the fittest”.

UK: Doubt still hangs over the future of goods consigned to troubled west London auctioneers Academy of Ealing.

PICASSO’S Blue Period canvas Femme aux bras croisés set a world record for the artist at auction on November 8.

A trio of international experts appointed by a Paris court have concluded that it may be technically possible to prevent Web browsers from consulting sites based in another country, but that the method envisaged is not fully reliable.

UK: ANTIQUES Portfolio, the dotcom company which had tied in its future with the now defunct Gavelnet, has itself filed for insolvency

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.

CLARION Events, organisers of the Olympia Fine Art and Antiques Fairs, assured the Antiques Trade Gazette last week that exhibitors at the June Olympia need not fear that the summer fair would be vastly enlarged in 2002.

FRANCE: A Paris court has granted a temporary injunction placing a Cézanne painting currently on show at a city museum under legal supervision pending an inquiry into its ownership.

As demonstration that one should always be alert outside one’s narrow field, it is worth citing the Civil War piece, pictured, that was offered in a Jewellery sale at Phillips London on October 3.