Art and antiques news from 2001

Antiques Shops, Fairs & Auctions 2001, published by Miller’s, Mitchell Beazley ISBN 184000360X. £12.99

UK: THE hottest property in Dreweatt Neate’s, Newbury, January auction of ceramic and glass, was late 19th century decorative porcelain. “You cannot have enough late 19th century in your sales these days,” said specialist Geoffrey Stafford Charles. Strong prices were paid for Mason’s ironstone and Oriental porcelain of this period, but a turn-of-the-century Coalport blue ground part dessert service took the biggest money.

US: OVERLOOKED in our recent report on the New York Old Master sales, this Jean-Honoré Fragonard (1732-1806) oil sketch for a much-admired, but now lost painting of The Visitation is worth putting on the record after it fetched an upper estimate $280,000 (£197,185) at the New York rooms of Doyle’s (15/10 per cent buyer’s premium) on January 24.

ONLY two weeks ago I featured Antique Networking and their plans for the year. What they could not reveal then but have now is their merger with GoAntiques, allowing them to claim the title “largest online antiques business on the Web”.

UK: SUCH has been the surge in popularity of English samplers and related textiles over the past few years (driven largely by American collectors who can no longer afford their own folk art) that any picture with even a hint of natural fibre is guaranteed to attract interest at auction.

UK: THE Leominster auctioneers heralded the return of “big, brown and broad” furniture when a number of large and somewhat cumbersome pieces saw strong prices and fierce bidding.

UK: ALREADY the king of the bottles and jugs collectables market which he has done so much to pioneer, Alan Blakeman’s latest successful sale of advertising collectables where some 410 lots totalled £44,651 has persuaded him to add an extra such event to the two specialist sales a year he has previously held at his South Yorkshire rooms.

UK: ONE of the scarcer plate collections in the Phillips sale was Via Crucis, novellamente eretta nell’ Atrio del Santissimo Crocifisso della chiesa parochiale, e collegiata di S.Polo. Engraved throughout, this small quarto Venetian volume of c.1780 comprises 16 full-page illustrations of the Stations of the Cross by Leonardis after Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo, plus 29 pages of text.

NEW regulations intended to ban the import of looted archaeological items from Italy into the USA are likely to increase the burden of documentation on antiquities dealers.

LONDON: DESPITE there being no official announcement from the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, the papers have been full of the news that Mark Jones is to be the new director of the Victoria & Albert Museum.

FRANCE: Three French museums have become embroiled in legal controversy after harbouring works of art looted from their original owners during the Nazi occupation of France during the Second World War.

UK: THE double January offering of two-day 1300-lot auctions at the Norfolk auctioneers followed the usual house pattern of a high volume of low-value entries interspersed with one or two gems, and saw consistent bidding throughout both auctions.

UK: THE lack of new and interesting material reported elsewhere in the ‘Cumberland’ fair report was reflected in Glendining’s first sale of this year on February 1. There was nothing there which is not relatively easy to find. It is perhaps because of this that it is worth reporting on the latest auction prices of some of the more usual coins.

UK: THE 122-lot furniture section at this Glasgow general sale was something of a double-edged claymore supplying, as it did, the biggest prices as well as the most casualties.

US: RECENT jitters about the health of the US economy have had a noticeably negative effect on several sectors of the international auction market. The US wine market, however, seems to be relatively untouched as yet.

UK: A 44-lot collection of books and manuscripts on heraldry was a feature of the January 31 sale held by Dominic Winter.

UK: POETRY was in the air for this first Hay sale of the new year.

UK: CONSIGNED by a private vendor who had played it regularly, this late 18th century harpsichord, right, by the prolific makers, Jacobus & Abraham Kirkham was the centre of attention at the Loughton, Essex rooms of Ambrose Auctioneers (15 per cent buyer's premium) on January 26.

UK: CONSIGNED by a private vendor who had played it regularly, this late 18th century harpsichord, right, by the prolific makers, Jacobus & Abraham Kirkham was the centre of attention at the Loughton, Essex rooms of Ambrose Auctioneers (15 per cent buyer's premium) on January 26.

UK: GOLFING enthusiasts flocked to the six-monthly sale of items relating to the game – a field pioneered at Chester – where 500 lots from clubs to balls, programmes to ceramics and miscellaneous emphemera such as advertising merchandise, were offered.