Art and antiques news from 2005

ATG have now updated the search capability of the price guide on www.antiquestradegazette.com, and it is infinitely faster than before.

Moorcroft miniatures are a collecting field in their own right. Anyone who owns a copy of Paul Atterbury’s book Moorcroft will be aware from the sleeve illustration just how many of the factory patterns were produced in miniature, often requiring an extra delicacy of touch on the part of the designer, potter and decorator.

Following an extensive regional review, Sotheby’s are to close a number of their high street consignment offices.

JUNE has been quite a month for record-breaking results in 20th century design.

FOUR people linked to a £30m crime spree have denied selling hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of art and antiques.

IT was a family occasion on Friday June 9 at Bonhams when chairman Robert Brooks invited his father Bill to unveil a plaque for the lecture theatre in their Bond Street HQ in front of a small gathering of family members and senior staff from the auction house.

“The world of enamel signs is like football and this sign is like Manchester United. It's in near-perfect condition and is a remarkable survivor. What were once considered scrap metal are now being seen as the works of art they really are.”

THE critically acclaimed Modern British loan exhibition, which has in recent years become the trademark of the Spring Olympia fair in London, has been abandoned and will be replaced by a sleeker, more contemporary show.

YOU wait forever then two come along at once. The sentiment so often expressed about London buses could equally well apply to rare early 18th century Continental porcelain teapots.

LAPADA will launch a new London flagship fair next year when LAPADA@TheRoyalAcademy opens from May 4 to 7 at the Royal Academy.

The natural desire of a woman to wear the dress of her dreams on her wedding day may be an element of vanity even a Quaker bride cannot completely suppress.

MONTHS of lobbying and debate over droit de suite have now come to an an end. Parties on all sides have submitted their views to the Patent Office on how the art resale levy should be introduced into the UK and administered.

The buyer of a letter purportedly written by Captain Thomas Hardy from HMS Victory six days after the Battle of Trafalgar has belatedly received a full refund after it proved to be a facsimile of a letter in a public collection.

ARTHUR Swallow Fairs are to return to a three-day Swinderby fair from July – only weeks after cutting it to two in a move they said stallholders welcomed.

NEWLY refurbished rooms at Send in Surrey mean that Ewbanks will now be able to hold two general sales a month (on the first and third Thursdays) with quarterly sales of fine art and antiques.

London antiquities dealer James Ede is handing back a rare bronze statuette – stolen from Samos Museum during the Second World War – to Greece.

Seven telephone lines and several bidders in the room competed for this venerable folding gaming board at the Diss Auction Rooms of Thos. Wm. Gaze & Son on May 21.

ENGLISH POTTERY SALESTHE products of the Staffordshire potteries from blue-printed tablewares to cottage chimney ornaments and Toby jugs to ironstone services, were the subject of a 356-lot sale at Bonhams’ Knightsbridge (20/12% buyer’s premium) back on May 11.

SIMON Hope of Hatton-based H&H Classic Auctions is to ride the full length of the Pennine Trail for charity.

THE undoubted high point of Christie’s King Street’s (20/12% buyer’s premium) single-owner sale on April 22 was the Italian equestrian bronze group of Carlo Emanuele I, Duke of Savoy pictured right.