Art and antiques news from 2001

US: DESCRIBED as “probably as good or better than any copy at auction in the last five years”, a 1951 first of J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye, the cloth binding extremely clean and the dust jacket in “nearly superb” condition, made $7500 (£5170) in the December 18 sale held by the Baltimore Book Company.

FRANCE: Venezia Fodaco dei Turghi, Carlo Naya’s moonlit view of the Grand Canal (c.1870), headed the Baron-Ribeyre photo sale on December 19. The albumen print, 161/2 x 21in (41 x 53cm), was dubbed in perfect condition and raced to a treble-estimate Fr55,000 (£5200).

Treasures To Hold: Irish and English Miniatures 1650-1850 from the National Gallery of Ireland Collection by Dr Paul Caffrey, published by the National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin. tel: 01 661 5133. email: artgall@eircom.net ISBN 090316275X £19.99.

UK: SUPPLY the goods and, through hell or, in this case, high water, they will come. The new Chichester operation of Henry Adams underlined this article of auctioneering faith when at their second sale they were able to put up a good range of items sought by the middle and upper markets and, despite the serious local flooding (one would-be buyer marooned miles away phoned to complain that the sale should have been cancelled), they enjoyed a considerable success.

US: A SCIENTIFIC library formed by New York businessman Joseph A. Frielich was sold by Sotheby’s New York for $10.7m (£7.2m) on January 10-11, 2001, and among many lots that made much higher than predicted sums was a magnificent copy of Albertus Seba’s Locupletissimi rerum naturalium thesauri...

UK: THIS 63/4in (17cm) high striking table clock proved to be the most expensive lot in a sale of clocks and watches held by Christie’s South Kensington 17.5/10 per cent buyer’s premium) on December 14.

UK: LOCAL bidders accounted for most of the Oriental and European ceramics and works of art offered at Edinburgh where 306 lots totalled £75,000 but the top seller went to an English bidder.

USA: FLORIDA-based organiser David Lester launches a new quality fair in the state when an international roster of dealers show at the first Palm Beach Town & Country Art and Antique Exposition from March 8 to 13.

UK: ILLUSTRATED here are examples of English and American comics and two pieces of original artwork from the Comic Book Postal Auctions sale which closed on December 12.

UK: ARTS Minister Alan Howarth has announced that the Government will pay £125,000 compensation to a family forced to sell a painting as they fled the Nazis.

UK: THE last of the monthly sales of collectors’ items and antiques of the year at Cirencester was dominated in visual terms by a pair of Cotswold stone columns, 7ft 6in (2.25m) high, which had been rescued by the vendor from a cowshed where they had lain for 60 years. They achieved a new-found status when they sold at £1200.

UK: THIS looks the life! Relaxed in elegant company, high above the world and its cares on a sunlit terrace with parasols and palms.

UK: SPECIALIST auctioneers Tool Shop Auctions (10 per cent buyer’s premium) finished the year with an 1100-lot dispersal on December 4 at Needham Market Suffolk, where a UK bidder beat an American rival to the top seller, this extremely rare boxwood Ultimatum brace, right, by William Marples.

UK: WELCOME as the activity of interior decorators is on today’s auction scene, it was still a little surprising to note the interest that some took in this 1950s butcher boy’s bicycle, right, offered at the Scarborough sale held by David Duggleby (10per cent buyer’s premium) on December 4.

UK: THE most prominent entry to this monthly two-day sale in Devon was an early 19th century linen press had come from a South Coast farmhouse.

UK: CLOSE to 640 lots were packed into the catalogue of the last Bloomsbury sale of the old year – half of them scientific and medical – but compared with the sale of the previous week, reported in Antiques Trade Gazette No. 1473, four-figure bids were few and far between.

UK: TWO days of selling in the niche sporting memorabilia market resulted in something of a score draw for specialists Mullock Madeley.

Irish bid beats London trade to £11,500 bureau plat UK: PHILLIPS’ Northern torch carrier nets consignments from an extensive area – everywhere east of the Pennines from the Scottish Border to South Lincolnshire – but, even so, the fine furniture sales that used to be held six times a year are now quarterly events with fairly slim 200-250-lot catalogues.

UK: FURNITURE and clocks made the running at the South Coast auctioneers’ final sale before Christmas, where local dealers were doing some last-minute shopping.

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.