Art and antiques news from 2009

It was Moorcroft’s take on flambé glazes that produced the highest price at Bonhams’ latest Ceramic Design sale.

SPECIALISTS at Bonhams have just announced that they have identified a magnificent Roman cameo glass vase, which may be the most important of its kind in the world.

ATG correspondent SIMON HEWITT gains exclusive access to the evidence used to unveil what the world's leading scholars say is the first major Leonardo Da Vinci find for 100 years.

LONDON-based international fair organisers Brian and Anna Haughton have announced that they will launch a new fair in London next summer, taking advantage of the opportunity offered by the demise of Grosvenor House.

FROM May 1913, the first distinctive Commonwealth of Australia banknotes were issued. They were controversial in that no portrait of the reigning monarch, George V, was included in the design.

MORE than a year after his county court victory against Royal Mail, coins and banknotes dealer Bruce Goulborn is taking them to court again.

METASTASIS, to most people, is a word with rather grim connotations – referring as it does to the spread of cancer. Applied to a set of playing cards, however, it has an altogether different and more attractive meaning.

A NEW antiques fair in Atlantic City is to be launched in March. It replaces the long-running Atlantique City Antiques Show – a once leading US fair that was axed by organisers F&W Publications in September.

LEADING UK fine art auctioneers Dreweatts have established a separate company governed by independent directors to handle clients’ money.

THE first Conspicuous Gallantry Cross group to appear at auction also became the highest-priced lot to sell via ATG's live bidding platform the-saleroom.com when it was hammered down for £88,000 at Dix Noonan Webb on September 18.

IT’S all change among Australia’s leading auctioneers as Goodmans, linked to Bonhams since 2003, are to adopt the Sotheby’s brand instead.

THIS rare c.1912 Märklin fire engine toy topped the sale of the second part of the Donald Kaufman toy collection at specialist saleroom Bertoia Auctions in Vineland, New Jersey, on September 25-26.

BORN a wealthy European aristocrat and court painter to a Turkish Sultan, the Maltese count Vittorio Amadeo Preziosi (1816-1882) was nevertheless a familiar figure among the back streets of Istanbul.

PICTURED here is an artist’s impression of one of a cache of easily identifiable antiques stolen from the Spanish home of two retired British antiques dealers.

LEADING London art dealer Richard Green is in the process of demolishing his Old Masters gallery at 33 New Bond Street, prior to completely rebuilding a new five-storey gallery.

THE Antiques are Green campaign, launched by Beaconsfield dealer Nigel Worboys earlier this year, is gaining momentum. Now we want as many people to back it as possible.

SCOTTISH auctioneers Loves Auction Rooms of Perth appear to have ceased trading, leaving vendors unpaid.

THIS diminutive table seen at Cambridge auctioneers Cheffins on the second day of their September 23-24 sale was a miniature version of the famous circular expanding dining table designed by Robert Jupe of Welbeck Street, London.

IT was the talk of the week in the print and broadcast media. The Staffordshire Hoard is being billed as the biggest collection found in England and the most important since the celebrated Sutton Hoo discovery of 1939.

THE Geneva Freeport (Port Franc) have insisted that a recent change to Swiss customs laws will not affect the city’s reputation as the art warehouse of Europe.