Art and antiques news from 2007

Kent’s Canterbury Auction Galleries were one of the few salerooms to hold a good quality art and antiques sale in August.

Leyburn auctioneers Tennants have standardised their buyer’s premium rates across their sales.

NOBLE Investments, the publicly listed coins company and owners of Baldwin’s auctioneers, have branched out into the stamps market.

A two-week exhibition of contemporary furniture featuring the work of some of the north of England’s top makers and designers is to be held at The Auction Centre in Leyburn, North Yorkshire, from August 21-31.

For the fifth year running the Auctioneers and Dealers will square up to each other at the Bank of England sports ground in Roehampton, south west London, for their annual football match.

IT has already become part of eBay folklore – the $503,300 beer bottle.

In the same way that Americans hold any material relating to the Pilgrim Fathers in the highest esteem, so anything associated with Australia’s earliest European settlers carries a huge premium for its domestic market.

New York to hold liquor auctions

Pictured here is a 16th century gold ring that was stolen from Somerset County Museum in Taunton on either August 6 or 7.

LOUISE Walker, who has been organising antiques fairs in Harrogate for the past 27 years, will launch a contemporary art fair in the North Yorkshire town next Easter.

ROGUE bidder Mark Wilson will be subject to criminal prosecution if he continues his spree, Nottingham Insolvency Court has ruled.

BOOMING art auctions and a massive growth in private sales have helped Sotheby’s to another set of record totals – this time for the first six months of 2007.

Maria Felix (1914-2002), born one of 16 children in the small Mexican town of Sonora, became an icon during the golden age of Mexican cinema in the 1940s and was generally acknowledged as the most beautiful face in its history.

JUDITH Miller, the face of the most successful antiques book publishing operation, is returning to the publishers where she started out in 1979.

THE Sussex Downs will provide the backdrop to this year’s RICS Conference from October 12-14.

Half-yearly Paris figures to August showed Christie’s consolidating their lead with sales of €100.3m (£67.3m), nearly twice as much as their nearest rivals, ArtCurial.

THE antiques and collectors fairs at Alexandra Palace will not be returning following a breaking off in negotiations between the organisers and the venue’s new owners.

It was catalogued as Bow c.1760 but this English porcelain coffee cup seen at Bamfords of Derby on July 25 was identified as belonging to a much rarer class of porcelain associated with Charles Gouyn and a short-lived London concern in St James’s.

Bonhams have announced a major strengthening and enlargement of the ceramics department at their New Bond Street rooms with the immediate appointment of two former Sotheby’s specialists.

This unusual 18th century bookstand or tray top commode, measuring 2ft 4in (71cm) wide, made a multiple-estimate £20,000 (plus 17.5 per cent buyer’s premium) at Dukes of Dorchester on July 26.