Art and antiques news from 2001

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: 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: 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.

HOPES of clarifying ownership rights over items sold at auction on the Internet have suffered a setback with the settling out of court of a potentially precedent-setting case.

Sotheby’s Holdings have confirmed that eight per cent of their staff worldwide – around 165 employees – are to lose their jobs as part of a cost-cutting and restructuring programme.

UK: BONHAMS and Brooks are to close their Manchester saleroom, compress departments in London and make 15 staff redundant in the first major shake-up since the two companies merged in September.

UK: THE Export Review Committee, which assesses whether outstanding works of art should be allowed to leave the country, has helped six such pieces stay in Britain in the past year.

UK: IF you stood fuming on the cocktail party sidelines over the festive season as your wife/husband got on famously with a lecherous member of the opposite sex, then something like this oversized (18in) metal syringe and vial which appeared at Christie's South Kensington on December 12, would have come in rather useful.

YAHOO have decided to ban sales of Nazi memorabilia and other items promoting racism from their Website from January 10.

USA: A 137-lot collection of marine archaeological artefacts salvaged by the company Arqueonautas from seven wrecks on the reefs of the Cape Verde Islands rounded off Sotheby’s horological and scientific auction on December 19.

FRANCE: Following a two-year investigation, French police have rounded up a gypsy gang responsible for hundreds of thefts from châteaux and private homes, many in Normandy and the Paris area.

THE flooded Welsh Marches in November didn’t augur well for sales but the Herefordshire auctioneers even managed to find a buyer for a highly unseasonal garden seat.

UK: Major new initiatives, including the introduction of a new criminal offence, are expected to come into force in the next few years to tackle illicit trade in cultural property.

UK: THE market in Guinness collectables continues to be as thirsty as that for the black stuff itself, to the point where buyers have to be on guard against forgeries of better known pieces.

PHILLIPS have announced that they are to merge with private treaty sale firm de Pury & Luxembourg, with Simon de Pury becoming chairman of the group and Daniella Luxembourg president.

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 World War II.

UK: IN THE days when thousands of game birds would be shot in a morning on the moors by the likes of Walsingham and Ripon, it might have come as a shock to learn that no records of this gun ever making a successful kill existed, even more so when the target was many thousand times the size of your average pheasant.

DMG have bought four antique shows in the US: The Original Miami Beach Antique Show, The Las Vegas Antique Jewellery Show, The September Miami Beach Jewellery Show and the November Miami Beach Antique Show.