Art and antiques news from 2003

SPECIALIST items took three of the top-selling lots at this George Kidner Hampshire sale on 9 July. One was a 1731 pocket globe by Richard Cushee, a land surveyor, map and globe maker known to have been apprenticed to John Sellers Sr, a leading figure in the London map trade at the time.

THE Burlington Magazine have extra reason to celebrate their centenary this month as they unveil the rediscovery of a lost work by Benvenuto Cellini. The 19in (48cm) bronze statuette of a satyr has been identified during the preparation of a catalogue raisonné of sculpture in the Royal Collection.

A federal judge has ordered dotcom giant eBay Inc. to pay $29m (£18.3m) to a Virginia inventor who accused the company of stealing his ideas for holding and searching online auctions. Ruling in Virginia on August 6, US District Court Judge Jerome Friedman said there was “no dispute” that the online auction site eBay had infringed patents which covered ways for people to make online bids backed by credit cards and purchase items over the Internet for a fixed price.

LAST year was not a good year for Partridge Fine Art – in fact according to John Partridge, the firm, founded in 1905, suffered their worst set of results in his 46-year chairmanship. Now, however, a change in business direction is helping the Bond Street dealership – one of the capital’s most venerable and traditional – to turn their fortunes around.

Christie’s have announced worldwide sales totalling £589m ($947m) for the first six months of 2003, again laying claim to the title of the world’s leading auction house. This compares with a dollar total for the same period last year of $989m, a fall of just over four per cent. Of this, auction sales make up £549m ($883m) and private sales £40m ($64m).

Anyone who has studied the Americana market in any detail will know how important surfaces have become to its many folk art aficionados. Original paint is not just a bonus – it can often be the difference between $1000 and $10,000. And it can happen here, too.

ORGANISERS dmg Antiques Fairs have abandoned their Brunel Antiques & Collectors Fair, the next of which were scheduled for August 25 and December 27.

NOW in its fourth year The Original London Textiles,Vintage Fashion and Accessories Fair continues to make its mark attracting a different crowd to most fairs, many of them from the fashion industry.

Decorator’s home supplies the demands of today now good looks outrank authentic age: WITH a hammer total of well over £1 million and a 98 per cent selling rate, the on-the-premises contents sale at Wormington Manor, Worcestershire, notched up the sort of figures in the grand tradition of such Sotheby’s events, but in fact it was in many ways much more representative of current trends than past glories.

A successful sale isn’t always an instant transaction and one of the more notable features of exhibiting at a fair is follow-on business. This can often take some time to materialise but is nonetheless satisfying, especially when it produces a particularly pleasing conclusion, as was the case with this pair of 18th century Sèvres vases à compartiments, pictured right, which London dealer Robert Compton-Jones of the Woollahra Trading Co. took to the Paris Biennale last September.

ITALY: MORE than 440 lots of silver and Russian works of art were offered at Christie’s (24-18.5% buyer’s premium, excluding VAT) sale in Rome on June 12, of which slightly less than half sold.

A small selection of striking and dramatic bookbindings by Philip Smith offered at Sotheby’s as part of their July 10 English Literature & History sale was not a complete success. In fact, five of the six lots failed to sell, but the most important of them, catalogued as “the greatest and most celebrated postwar English bookbinding” brought a bid of £130,000 from a collector.

NOT everyone sleeps it off on Boxing Day. Lancashire organisers Hoyle Promotions have been organising a Giant Boxing Day Fair at the Empress Ballroom at Blackpool Winter Gardens for more than 20 years and both public and trade attendance grows from year to year.

HONG KONG ASIAN SALES : When SARS broke out in Asia earlier this year, Sotheby’s decided to hold their Asian auction series in Hong Kong as planned in April, but Christie’s postponed their Hong Kong sales until early July. Sotheby’s may not have registered the same levels of Western interest in their two fine Chinese sales on April 27 (the combined 281 lots totalled a premium-inclusive HK$106,481,440), but like Christie’s, they reported increased mainland Chinese buying.

NORTH Yorkshire-based organisers Galloway Antiques Fairs continue a busy summer from August 29 to 31 with their fair at Naworth Castle, Brampton in Cumbria. Space limits this event to just 28 dealers but they obviously do business as a good many of them have been with Naworth since the first in 1996.

THERE will be plenty of antiques activity in central Paris this autumn, centred on two major fairs each with their quota of high- profile international dealers. A feast for fairgoers, but also behind the scenes a feast for those with a taste for intrigue since, as is so often the case with the Paris trade, there is plenty of politics involved. My Paris-based colleague Simon Hewitt takes a peek behind the arras and reports:

ONE can never accuse the energetic Essex organiser Robert Bailey of resting on his laurels, or even standing still for longer than it takes to greet a visitor to one of his fairs. More aware than most independent organisers of the increasing importance of marketing Robert has just appointed Zöe Martin (right) to his permanant staff to oversee marketing and public relations.

Dealers are always complaining that, thanks to the Internet and the trade Press, there are no sleepers any more. But a seriously interesting group of pictures appears to have slipped through the trawl nets of specialist London dealers, leaving a local West Country trader with what may turn out to be a canny buy.

Given that they were sold in such massive quantities, Beatles singles remain relatively common and few command more than £10-20 each – unless of course they have a more personal connection with the Fab Four.

THE latest figures published by Customs and Excise show a significant leap in fine art and antiques imports and exports for 2002. Exports to non-European Union countries rose by more than 20 per cent from 2001, while imports went up by 16.5 per cent.