Art and antiques news from 2003

ONE of the oldest provincial vetted fairs, the annual Surrey Antiques Fair, moves for its 37th staging next year to Farnham Castle. It has always been held at Guildford Civic Hall, which is due to close for redevelopment, and while the closure has been on the cards for some years, it was finalised earlier this year. The last Surrey fair in Guildford is held this week from October 2 to 5.

CAREER progression is more important to those looking for jobs in the art and antiques sector than how much they earn. But over 40 per cent would consider leaving the industry altogether if they lost their jobs in order to gain security for themselves and their families.

Spink will hold their first ever sale in Paris on November 17 when they offer the La Fayette collection of stamps. Following a seven-month acceptance process, Spink have now joined the select band of outside auctioneers licensed to sell in the French capital.

Rubbing shoulders with racing stables, vineyards and Spanish holiday homes at the ExCeL exhibition centre on September 19-21 were dealers John Bly and Wakelin & Linfield, LAPADA and toy auctioneers Vectis. But an opportunity missed was the general consensus of the event among a dozen or so representatives from the trade who took part in the first Leisure & Alternative Investment Show.

It has only been a matter of weeks since the Antiques Trade Gazette’s last warning concerning scam letters targeting small businesses over the Data Protection Act. Despite the alert, however, dealers continue to be at risk and the complaints we have received about one firm in particular have, if anything, increased.

Asian Art in London and AXA Art Insurance have announced the shortlist of the two categories of the AXA Art Award for Asian Art in London. The judges were Dr Oliver Impey, Senior Assistant Keeper of the Department of Eastern Art at the Ashmolean Museum; John Ayres, Keeper of the Far Eastern Department at the V&A until 1982, freelance journalist Susan Moore and Country Life Salerooms Correspondent Huon Mallalieu.

Sotheby’s will sell the contents of Fawley House, Fawley, near Henley-on-Thames, Oxfordshire on October 14-15. Their vendor, David McAlpine of the construction dynasty, has collected for 30 years.

TRAVEL POSTERS: The annual travel poster sale held by Christie’s South Kensington (17.5/10% buyer’s premium) usually enjoys a keen collectors’ following, with buyers drawn by the evocative nostalgia and romance of a bygone age when the train rather than the car was the principal method of reaching one’s holiday destination.

John Wilkes Booth, Lee Harvey-Oswald – political assassins have been among the most vilified men in American history. However there is something distinctly British about the strong sympathy vote received by the one man who has successfully done away with a Prime Minister of this country. The Staffordshire potters even made a jug to mark his passing.

VINTAGE fashion seems to be one of the most vogueish collecting areas internationally, and I hear serious fashionistas queue up for hours to get among the frocks at the Manhattan Vintage Clothing Show, to be held on October 10 and 11 at the Metropolitan Pavilion, 125 West 18th Street, between Sixth and Seventh Avenues in New York City.

VETERAN Chelsea organiser, Hove-based Cindy Mainwaring, is delighted to announce that as from this Sunday, September 28, the newly-formed Fulham branch of the Women’s Institute, universally known as the WI, will run the catering at her monthly fairs at Chelsea Old Town Hall.

Modern British’s reputation as the market of the moment was underlined at Sotheby’s Olympia (20/12% buyer’s premium) on September 10 when the trade had their last major opportunity to buy stock before the 20/21 British Art Fair.

THERE were very few books in the September 9 antiques sale held by Sworders of Stansted Mountfitchett, but one of them was a copy of Charles Dickens’ The Chimes that was signed and inscribed to a man with whom Dickens was later to become involved in a tiresome and disagreeable round of threats of litigation – an episode that was categorised in the title of a 1996 American book on the subject as The Charles Dickens-Thomas Powell Vendetta.

ARGUABLY the most apt backdrop for an art fair anywhere in the world is the Renaissance city of Florence, and the city can be seen at its best at this time of year when, from September 26 to October 5, the 23rd Florence Biennale takes place at the Palazzo Corsini on the Arno.

IF the buzz and business achieved at last week’s opening night continued throughout, then the 20/21 British Art Fair at the Commonwealth Institute in Kensington should prove one of the fair hits of the year.

At just over $12m (including premium) US auction house Doyle New York made a significant contribution to the series of Asian Art sales held in Manhattan last week with their September 16 auction of the F. Gordon Morrill collection of Chinese porcelain. They found buyers for 82 per cent of the 115 lots, but far and away the star attraction was this large 141/2in (37cm) high Yuan dynasty blue and white pilgrim flask of c.1345.

The Lewes auctioneers Gorringe’s (15% buyer’s premium) experienced one or two pleasant surprises in the third-day picture section of their September 9-11 sale. Alan Windsor’s Handbook of Modern British Painting and Printmaking 1900-1990 describes the Wakefield-born, Slade-trained Mark Senior (1862-1927) as an artist whose “early painting was influenced by Clausen whilst later work reflected the techniques of Steer, Whistler, Boudin and the Impressionists”.

The energetic organisers of ART COLOGNE, Koelnmesse, have beefed up their team with the appointment last week of Gérard Andrew Goodrow, 39, as fair director, a new post. He should be happily settled in by the end of October when the next ART COLOGNE opens.

IT started as a joke, but at £240,000, it is now one of the most important pieces of ceramics to change hands in recent years. One of the most extraordinary pieces of maiolica in existence, the phallic plate, pictured right, whose purchase grant of £100,000 is the highest ever given by the National Art Collections Fund for a piece of ceramics, dates to about 1536 and is attributed to Francisco Urbino, one of the leading maiolica painters of the period.

ONE of the Home Counties’ longest running vetted, quality events, the Surrey Antiques Fair, will be held for the 36th year from October 2 to 5 and it will be the end of an era as this is the last staging at its original venue, the Guildford Civic Hall.