Art and antiques news from 2004

AN escaped slave who became a prominent social reformer, journalist and public official, Frederick Douglass (1817-95) published a first account of his life in 1845, but revised and extended versions followed in 1855 and, finally in 1881 as The Life and Times...

RELATIVES of one of Italy’s leading 20th century glass designers have launched an assault on the trade in works using his name.

AFTER 93 years trading in the West End, celebrated English furniture dealers Stair & Company Ltd closed their doors last month.

“IN my 30 years in the business I’ve not seen anything like this before,” said Neil Freeman, of Angling Auctions. “I’ve checked everywhere, but I can’t find anything like it.”

MOVING from its usual September slot, the autumn Decorative Antiques and Textiles Fair – the last of the three annual stagings – will be in its trademark marquee in Battersea Park, London SW11 from October 5 to 10.

BOUND in full calf, a 1579-80 edition of John Kitchin’s The Authoritie of al Justices of Peace... was sold for £700 in a Lawrences of Crewkerne sale of July 6.

IT was a third edition of 1799, slightly foxed and browned and lacking the half titles, but the copy of George Walker’s novel The Vagabond seen in a Bloomsbury Auctions sale of August 19 was in a contemporary calf gilt binding and it sold at £400 (C.R. Johnson).

NEW YORK’s pioneer organisers Wendy Management have been putting antiques fairs together for 70 years but they are not resting on their laurels.

IT’S been billed as the most important discovery in British numismatics for many years. Now the London auction house Spink are to offer the first newly-discovered Anglo-Saxon gold penny to come to light for almost a century.

IT may have been the peak of the summer holiday season, but it was business as usual at Mallams (15% buyer's premium) Gloucestershire rooms when the 515-lot sale on August 19 totalled in the region of £70,000.

Furniture from Hills House, Denham, the property of Sir John and Lady Mills, will be sold at auction by Hamptons of Godalming on October 20.

OFFERED as part of a Lawrences of Crewkerne sale of July 6 was ‘The Valehouse Collection of Letters to Mrs W.K. Clifford’. Though little read nowadays, ‘Lucy’ Clifford was immensely popular in late Victorian and early Edwardian times and was even classed with Edith Wharton, Joseph Conrad and H.G. Wells as one of those whose books “will never die”.

THE ebullient Samuel Boscher (16.74% buyer’s premium) was in typically sonorous form for his annual two-day summer jamboree in Cherbourg on August 8/9.

WITH the autumn season well underway, it’s good to see a number of dealers promoting business with selling exhibitions which, apart from anything else, present a confident looking trade to the world. Second generation West Sussex furniture dealer Frank Wilson, owner of Wilsons Antiques, has held such an exhibition in Worthing every year since the early 1990s and this autumn’s event will run from September 28 to October 2 at his showrooms at 45-47 New Broadway, Tarring Road.

SOMETHING for nothing is seldom attainable but always desirable and David Fletcher of Unicorn Fairs promises just that at his Lancashire fixture on Sunday October 10.

NEW YORK’s pioneer organisers Wendy Management have been putting antiques fairs together for 70 years but they are not resting on their laurels.

CLARION Events, who run the Summer Olympia Fine Art and Antiques Fair, are to cut the number of stands at next year’s staging.

SOMETHING for nothing is seldom attainable but always desirable and David Fletcher of Unicorn Fairs promises just that at his Lancashire fixture on Sunday October 10.

MANHATTAN Asian art dealers William Lipton hold a selling exhibition of Chinese furniture, what they term “literati objects” and other Asian works of art at 41 East 57th Street until October 7.

MANHATTAN Asian art dealers William Lipton hold a selling exhibition of Chinese furniture, what they term “literati objects” and other Asian works of art at 41 East 57th Street until October 7.