Art and antiques news from 2004

ARE there any corners of Britain where the trade can enjoy an old-fashioned auction without the intrusion of confident private buyers? If so, Abergavenny is no longer one of them.

THE final 130 or so offerings in Abbotts (10% buyer's premium) 675-lot Suffolk sale on March 10 showed that good examples of standard late Georgian and Victorian furniture can still find buyers if the price is right.

ALTHOUGH Derwent Lees (1885-1931) is recorded in reference books, such as the Handbook of Modern British Painting and Print-making 1900-1990, published by Ashgate, he is not that well known outside specialist trade circles.

THE rarest and probably the earliest piece of printing in a February 26 sale held by Pacific Book Auctions of San Francisco, the papal indulgence from Wynkyn de Worde’s press seen right, was bid to $13,000 (£6890), but there were some other early items in the collection of editions of Aesop’s Fables formed by the late Dr Margaret Rose Quentin that opened the auction.

THE 330-lot tribal art sale at Blanchet & Associés (17.94% buyer’s premium) back on January 30 featured 173 pre-Columbian pieces. These achieved a 70 per cent take-up, with a top price of €14,500 (£10,000) for a polished stone ritual Hacha from Guatemala, right, 9 1/2 x 7 1/2in (24 x 19.5cm), whose relief decoration took the form of the profiled face of a dead man, topped by the giant, curved fang of the sacred serpent.

LAST September, businessman and glass enthusiast Nicholas Lyne sold his stake in Berkshire auctioneers Law Fine Art to his partner and co-founder Mark Law and teamed up with Sussex ceramics dealer Brad Dover of Jupiter Antiques to launch the Kensington Ceramics & Glass Fair, the first of which was held at the Kensington Close Hotel on February 26 and 27.

HELPED by both the input of new collectors and the appearance on the market of some good pieces, Troika pottery certainly experienced renewed interest in 2003.

WHEN it comes to trade fairs it’s showtime all the year round in Milan, but antiques have their biggest flowering in the late spring with two major vetted fairs in the city taking place hot on each other’s heels.

From April 1 Bonhams will increase the buyer’s premium in their Knightsbridge rooms to bring it in line with that charged at Bond Street.

ALREADY a good day out for the public, there is increasing trade awareness of the Oxford Brocante, the third of which will be held on Sunday April 18 at the Randolph Hotel in Beaumont Street. With the emphasis very much on decorative works it also offers vintage fashion.

IF the performance of the 52-lot clock section of Bristol Auction Rooms (15% buyer's premium) March 2 sale was anything to go by, this firm’s reputation for selling timepieces is gathering pace.

Illustrated in colour on the catalogue cover of Clevedon Salerooms’ March 4 sale was a watercolour described as being by Richard Parkes Bonington (1801-1828).

Setting a new house record at Carmarthen auctioneers Peter Francis on March 9 was this 18th century Coromandel Coast marquetry inlaid padouk, ebony and ivory chest of five short and two long drawers.

THE first day of a Belle Epoque sale held by Doyle of New York on February 25-26 awoke what one might, with greater reason than most, term a sleeper – the remarkable piece of furniture, catalogued as “An Italian Baroque style Mahogany Bed”, seen right. The bed was part of the Woodruff collection, comprising stock from a former Hollywood business that from 1922-60 was a popular rental source for the film studios, but stock that for the past 40 or more years has been in storage in Oklahoma.

IN addition to technical excellence, decorative appeal and early date, sentiment is an important player in the sampler market.

BOUND volumes of Manchester United home match programmes from the 1950s seasons were the best sellers in the football section of a sporting memorabilia sale held by Bonhams Chester on January 28, with prices ranging from £520 to £1300 for the volume covering the 1957-58 season that brought the devastating Munich air disaster.

HOT on the heels of the distinctly glitzy and upmarket Palm Beach Classic, a new fair, the Palm Beach Jewelry and Antique Show, moved into the same venue, the new Palm Beach County Convention Center, with a broader-based, much larger fair, and pulled it off.

The highlight of the sale conducted by Bourne End Auction Rooms (12% buyer’s premium) near Marlow, Buckinghamshire, on March 4 was this pair of tin-glazed earthenware plates, right, made c.1740 by Saverio Grue at the Castelli factory in Naples.

WITH collectors’ taste in Modern British art shifting in recent years from pre-war to post-war, the once all-conquering Newlyn School has not generated as many headline-stealing results as it did in the late 1980s.

“COINS transmit the image of a ruler far more widely than any other medium available before photography.” Thus the blurb trumpeting the exhibition in the British Museum of portraits on coins.