Art and antiques news from 2007

Sotheby’s are strongly opposing proposed legislation in New York that aims to outlaw the ‘chandelier’ bid.

A MAN has pleaded guilty to defrauding dealers, auction houses, museums, and art galleries over a 17-year period.

Majority of auctioneers and dealers breath sigh of relief, but other were not so fortunate.

At any other sale the circumstances could have proved disastrous, but when the boat tent in the stewards’ enclosure in Henley-on-Thames flooded during The Henley Sale at Bonhams on July 21, things went swimmingly.

Third threshold won’t hurt South Kensington says director

LONDON has gained ground in the global art market during 2007 with over $2.35bn in sales at Christie’s and Sotheby’s for the first six months of the year. In their US rooms the two leading auctioneers took $2.6bn over the same period.

DESPITE the odd flooded cellar and car park, ATG are not aware of a single UK auctioneer in affected areas who will not be going ahead with their sales in the coming week.

THE Artists’ Collecting Society have completed their first year of collecting and paying out the Artists’ Resale Right. They have now been given the mandate to collect the resale right by 200 artists, including well known names like Lucien Freud and Anthony Caro.

Soon after marrying his young wife Jane, William Morris commissioned his friend Philip Webb to build them a house. The end result, completed in 1859, was Red House, named after its steep red-tiled roof.

HERITAGE grants have helped the British Museum acquire the 15th century illuminated manuscript known as the Wardington Hours.

After more than 50 years in the business, Worcestershire auctioneer Philip Laney is to close his firm and take up a consultancy post with chartered surveyors and land agents Doorbars.

This summer has seen a spate of sleepers awoken in provincial salerooms, but inevitably the one that grabbed the headlines in the national press was the tale of the rediscovered ‘Titian’.

PHILLIPS de Pury look to have taken another step to increase their influence as a major player in London’s contemporary art market by forming a new partnership with The Saatchi Gallery.

High drama at the Chichester auction rooms of Henry Adams on July 19 when this pair of Chinese famille rose moon flasks shot to £760,000. The price, a house record, is also the fourth highest ever achieved in a UK auction room outside of London.

IT must be every trustee’s nightmare. You dispose of vanloads of unwanted books for what you think is a realistic £36,000, but then over a period of less than a year you see the pick of them then raise around £500,000 at auction.

TRACEY Emin, who recently launched a scathing attack on Tower Hamlets Council after it granted a licence for a controversial three-month “city beach bar” in a car park yards from her Spitalfields home, is a regular visitor to Spitalfields Antiques Market, most recently looking for a tiara to wear to charity balls.

Christie’s confirm new sale categories

Thought that internet bidding was for low value items only? The five-figure sums tendered online at two country sales last week suggest the received wisdom may need a rethink.

Antique hunters and collectors now have a way to locate fairs, centres, dealers’ shops and private sellers around the UK using a new online Collectables Map that pinpoints different locations.

When the Dorchester Fine Art saleroom Duke’s sold two rediscovered panels of Dominican saints by Fra Angelico for £1.7m, it was one of the best documented events outside the London rooms accompanied by months of pre-sale media coverage.