Art and antiques news from 2001

USA: Sotheby’s is likely to cease all sales at its branch in Chicago after November 1. Around 19 of the office’s 31 employees will lose their jobs as Sotheby’s closes the auction house they bought from Leslie Hindman in 1997 and reverts to running just a consignment office in the Midwest capital.

IN the wake of the September 11 Manhattan tragedy there have been changes to the auction calendar in New York and some fairs may be affected. These changes will be updated as soon as we are aware of further postponements and cancellations. Last updated 19 Sept.

Lovers of matters horticultural and supporters of the National Trust will be able to combine both interests this month. Sotheby’s September 25 sale of Garden Statuary and architectural items at Billingshurst includes a special 21-lot section titled The National Trust Gardens Year Auction comprising items donated to the Trust for sale as part of its Gardens Year celebrations with the aim of raising money for its Gardens Fund.

CHRISTOPHER Elwes, former managing director of Bonhams, and Indian art expert Patrick Bowring have broken new ground by opening India’s only specialist fine art auction house. They will hold their first sale in Delhi on November 5 and aim to create a network of offices to service the Indian market.

USA: As Sotheby’s scale down their operations in the American Midwest, the possiblity of a new auction powerhouse in the region has emerged as a group of investors seek to gain control of both Dargate Auction Rooms of Pittsburgh and the Cleveland-based eWolfs.

A View of Delft: Vermeer Then And Now, by Anthony Bailey, published by Chatto & Windus (ISBN 0701169133). £16.99 hb

ONE of the top lots in the Thomson Roddick & Medcalf sale of July 18 was a privately printed volume of 1890 containing works by Dante, illustrated by Phoebe Traquair and supplied with notes by J.S. Black.

New York: Due to immense logistical difficulty, particularly shipping, in the wake of last Tuesday's tragedy in New York, London-based organisers Brian and Anna Haughton have today announced a cancellation of their International Art and Design Fair scheduled for September 29th to October 2nd at New York's 7th Regiment Armory on Park Avenue.

ASSEMBLED by one of the authors and general editors of the series, a set of the first 178 New Naturalist titles of 1945-92, all of them firsts in dust jackets, brought a bid of £3400 in the Y Gelli sale of July 20.

FAIRLY routine furniture and modest pictures predictably took most of the higher prices at this Brightwells 850-lot sale in Herefordshire on 15-16 August but a couple of unusual items among the silver and the objets d’art were the eye-catchers.

AT the second outing Antiques For Everyone – Glasgow confirmed its status as Scotland’s top fair and certainly enough business was achieved by enough of the 170 exhibitors at the Scottish Exhibition and Conference Centre to indicate a secure future for this new fixture.

DAVID Lay’s trawls through Cornwall to mount regular sales like this 2000-lot marathon on 16-17 July usually throw up something special but here it was a case of piling ’em high and selling ’em reasonable.

THE two-day Staffordshire sale at Wintertons on 25-26 July was, at just under 800 lots, not perhaps quite a giant sale but it certainly covered the range of lower and middle-priced antiques.

Sundials: An Illustrated History of Portable Dials, by Hester Higton, published by Philip Wilson. ISBN 0856675237. £29.95 hb

DENMARK: IN September last year, Copenhagen auctioneers Museumsbygningen (25% buyer’s premium) created a stir by achieving DKr1,000,000 (£85,470) for an oil study of a nude by Wilhelm Marstrand (1810-1873) dating from January 3, 1833, the day on which Professor C.F. Eckersberg and five pupils made the first ever paintings of a female life model at the Danish Academy of Fine Arts.

On September 11 Ebay suspended trading in all items relating to the World Trade Center or the Pentagon until October 1 as a mark of respect to victims and their families.

SPECIALIST collectors and dealers don’t seem to have a closed season, certainly not in the arms and armour world and they turned up in strength at Weller & Dufty in Birmingham on 25 July.

JUST opened in an unprepossessing 1970s gasworks laboratory on the Fulham/Chelsea divide is Core One, a collective of five very unconventional antique dealers who specialise in items old and new for the decorator.

FRANCE: Etude Tajan, France’s premier commissaires-priseurs, are to be known from now on as just plain TAJAN. The firm, run by Jacques Tajan and his son François, has been known as Etude Tajan since Jacques Tajan went independent from former partner Antoine Ader in 1995.

A ‘LOST’ painting by the great 17th century French painter Nicolas Poussin has come to light and will be offered for sale by Galerie Koller in Zurich on October 5.