Art and antiques news from 2002

The patent dispute pitching a Virginia inventor against eBay appears to be heading to trial. US District Court Judge Jerome Friedman issued a series of rulings in late October that, while firming up aspects of eBay’s defence, rejected the company’s attempts to have the claims – made by MercExchange, a Virginia technology company – thrown out.

The Impressionist and Modern sales were not the only New York sales last week to smash auction records. Christie’s November 5-6 sale of 19th and 20th century prints brought an extraordinary record price for a single print by Henri de Toulouse Lautrec. La Grande Loge, an 1897 lithograph in colours on wove paper, was an extremely rare and previously unrecorded colour trial proof produced before an edition of 12.

The importance of clear due diligence in dealings has been highlighted by an Irish court overruling the country’s statute of limitations on stolen goods in a civil case.

Antiquities dealers could find their trade in legally exported artefacts threatened despite due diligence if the Egyptian government succeeds in reversing Sotheby’s sale of a granite bust of Ramses II.

UK: SOTHEBY’S have denied reported claims by a gang caught in possession of stolen antiques that they had an insider working at the auction house. The theft was highlighted after the arrests of four Romanians and one Kosovan last week during a police sting to uncover an alleged plot to kidnap the celebrity Victoria Beckham.

LONDON: AXA Art Insurance, sponsors of Asian Art in London, have announced the winners of the two AXA Art Awards, one for two-dimensional and the other for three-dimensional works.

UK: AUCTIONEER Rupert Toovey is to open a huge new saleroom at Washington, just off the A24 outside Storrington in West Sussex. The move, which he has been working on for more than a year, will bring him a purpose-built auction space that is two and a half times the size of his current Partridge Green rooms.

DESPITE warning after warning – the latest on the front page of last week’s Antiques Trade Gazette – dealers are still falling foul of Fairguide, the Vienna-based firm who have been misleading the trade into ordering unwanted advertising for years.

The trade were in mourning last week following the deaths of New York-based dealer Tom Devenish, aged 84, Guildford dealer Charles Traylen, aged 96 and London silver dealer Michael Koopman, aged 56.

OF the three new world auction records taken at Christie’s Rockefeller Center saleroom on the evening of November 6, two of them were for pieces of sculpture. This follows on from Christie’s success in the May Impressionist and Modern sales, their best – as Sotheby’s were for them – for some time, when Constantin Brancusi’s 1913 bronze Danaïde took $16.5m (£11.6m), the highest price for any piece of sculpture sold at auction.

FLORIDA hosts a new design fair next year when ARTform, the International Fair for Dimensional Fine Art, debuts at the International Pavilion of the Palm Beaches in downtown West Palm Beach from March 6 to 11.

LONDON: DESIGNERS of today for tomorrow is how the Fine Art Society describe their annual Christmas show which will be held at their extensive galleries at 148 New Bond Street, London W1 from November 30 to December 11.

David Dickinson Cheap as Chips: the Duke’s Priceless Guide to the World of Antiques video, available from November 18. £14.99; DVD version £17.99. Running time 51 mins. Momentum Pictures.

The 12th specialist textiles sale under the Rossini (17.342% buyer’s premium) hammer at Drouot on October 9 attracted keen trade interest, with 76 per cent of the 550 lots sold, yielding a hammer total of some €430,000 (£270,000).

Miller’s Is it Genuine? How to collect antiques with confidence General Editor John Bly, published by Miller’s. ISBN 1840006234 £19.99

The imminent sale at Bloomsbury Book Auctions this Thursday (November 7) will feature a late 15th century French illustrated manuscript of the most important treatise on hunting of the Middle Ages, shown right. Gaston Phébus’ Livre de la Chasse and Livre de l’Ordre de Chevallerie, illuminated manuscript on paper, bound in 17th-century calf, in modern morocco-backed cloth case is estimated at £250,000-300,000.

SHOWING until November 23 at Gary Grant’s gallery at 18 Arlington Way, London EC1, near Sadlers Wells, is a selling exhibition Post-war patterned pots which offers 110 pieces highlighting innovative designs on mid-20th century ceramics.

In May 1919 New Yorker Raymond Orteig offered a $25,000 prize for the first non-stop aeroplane flight from New York to Paris. In the ensuing eight years dozens of people managed to cross the Atlantic Ocean by air, but no one met Orteig’s criteria until eight years later when on May 20-21, 1927 Charles A. Lindbergh made the longest non-stop, heavier-than-air transatlantic flight in his plane, the Spirit of St Louis.

BIRMINGHAM-based ex-dealer and now fairs organiser Jean May holds nine Deco fairs at various locations in the Greater London area and launches a new one in North London this Sunday, November 10.

Studio Glass 1960-2000 by Graham McLaren, published by Shire Publications. ISBN 073780527X. £4.99sb