Art and antiques news from 2008

EBAY’S latest bid to tackle fraud – by insisting UK sellers accept payment via PayPal – has come under attack. Due to come into force on July 9, the online giant says it will help block fraudulent transactions and data theft.

London’s flagship June Impressionist and Modern sales saw Christie’s and Sotheby’s notch up a premium-inclusive total of £298m between them in three days.

A DEAL is being finalised which means Palm Beach | America's International Fine Art & Antique Fair, is owned once again by Florida-based entrepreneur David Lester, who founded the event.

A TRIPLE portrait of three Elizabethan girls that sold for £620,000 at Christie’s sale of the Simon Sainsbury Collection has now been identified as a picture of the Egerton sisters from c.1601-2.

The only known copy of the world’s first telephone directory sold for $140,000 (£71,430) at Christie’s New York on June 17 as part of an $11m (£5.9m) sale of the Richard Green scientific library.

THIS pottery figure of a cat is among the rarest of the Cubist-style felines designed by Louis Wain for the Austrian manufacturer Amphora.

Is this the best ever dug bottle? That is the question asked by advertising and bottle specialists BBR who will offer it for sale at The Elsecar Heritage Centre, Barnsley, on July 6.

A Kent dealer has received a two-year suspended sentence following a three-year international operation into ivory and whale-tooth smuggling. The case is the latest under Operation Charm, an ongoing campaign against the illegal trade in endangered species in London.

Sotheby’s have announced the highlight of their autumn series: an auction of new works consigned by Damien Hirst on September 15-16.

AN historic and important medieval scientific instrument, known as the Canterbury Quadrant, has been saved for the nation. St James’s specialist dealers Trevor Philip and Sons have sold the quadrant to the British Museum for £411,250.

Christie’s King Street devoted an entire day to traditional English furnishings when a 369-lot all-day sale of the collection of the late Simon Sainsbury was followed by a highly select, mixed-owner, 12-lot evening auction of what they termed “exceptional furniture”.

The latest addition to the London street art calendar took place at Village Underground in Shoreditch on June 17, where Dreweatts became the first auctioneer from outside London to host a dedicated Urban Art Sale.

Elaine Dean, Secretary General of The British Antique Dealers’ Association for the past 25 years, will step down on July 10. She will be succeeded by her current deputy Mark Dodgson who already has 18 years experience with the BADA.

THE man regarded as the world’s leading authority on Rembrandt has declared the self portrait that sold at auction in the Cotswolds for £2.2m last October as a genuine work by the Dutch master.

THE embattled dealers at Antiquarius have cautiously welcomed the news that the Kensington and Chelsea council have rejected the landlords’ application to redevelop part of the antiques centre.

Christie’s English furniture day on June 18 was marked by the £9m auction of a dozen pieces of top-flight examples and by the 369-lot £13.6m sale of the collection of the late Simon Sainsbury.

A COLLECTION of furniture and objects from a grand Parisian townhouse will go under the hammer in France at the end of the month – courtesy of the Ivory Coast Government.

An entire day was devoted to glass by Bonhams earlier this month as they offered just shy of 500 lots of English and Continental glass in their Bond Street rooms.

AN influx of Russian buyers was in town last week to flex their wallets and work their way through a week-long series of Russian sales in four London rooms. On offer was a rich mix of paintings, Fabergé, arms and armour, porcelain, metalware and anything else the auction houses thought might tempt the Russian palate.

LEGISLATION that risks blighting the trade in a large number of cultural objects could soon be amended thanks to common ground between the art market and the Ministry of Defence.