Art and antiques news from 2010

THIS 20in (50cm) high gilt and clear glass vase of Islamic inspiration is the central element of the three-piece garniture discovered by Rayleigh, Essex auctioneers Staceys in a home near Southend-on-Sea.

IN the early hours of August 6, a Henry Moore sketch and two oil paintings were stolen from Trinity House on the High Street in Broadway, south Worcestershire.

The man behind the Atlantique City Fair, once dubbed the largest indoor antiques and collectables fair in the world, is to launch a new event in Pennsylvania.

AN extraordinary legal loophole threatens to decimate the unique collection of the award-winning Wedgwood Museum in Stoke-on-Trent.

EXCITING plenty of bidding against its £500-800 estimate at Ely-based saleroom Rowley's was this rare 9in (22.5cm) early 17th century engraved horn shoehorn.

AFTER more than a decade of targeting unsuspecting dealers, scam advertising company European City Guide have struck again.

IS David Lester co-owner of the Olympia summer fair or not?

Led Zeppelin, Robert Burns and a 14-year-old John Everett Millais might seem unlikely bedfellows. But a group of four pencil drawings which have surfaced at the Devon auctioneers Chilcotts of Tiverton appear to link the three.

THE future of the Export Review Licensing service is under review again after Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt announced the scrapping of the Museums and Libraries Association (MLA) which administers it.

THE family firm of Gildings Auctioneers, established since 1987 in Market Harborough, are to open additional premises on the edge of Leicester.

The late Fred Dibnah's 1912 Aveling and Porter Ltd steam tractor fetched £240,000 at Cheffins vintage auction on July 24, selling to Michael Oliver, chairman of Knutsford-based manufacturer Oliver Valves.

THIS year’s National Antiques Week (November 15-21) will see offers of 20 per cent discounts from dealers all over the country.

ON August 21, Andrew Hilton will host his first sale of commemoratives and pot lids under the new name of his business, Historical & Collectable.

WE regret to announce the death of fair organiser Peter Burgoin, of Arthur Swallow Fairs, last month.

CHRISTIE’S are launching a fair during Frieze week for dealers and publishers specialising in contemporary editions. The auctioneers' South Kensington saleroom will be given over to the event, titled Multiplied, focused primarily on prints, photography, sculpture and artists’ books.

Among a series of records for British watercolours posted during Sotheby's sale entitled An Exceptional Eye: A Private British Collection on July 14, the most spectacular price was the £2.1m bid for this striking view of the Lake of Albano and Castel Gandolfo by John Robert Cozens (1752-1797).

THE plethora of BBC daytime television shows based around antiques and collectables has drawn criticism from the corporation’s governing body.

A DEBT-plagued university in Boston has entered into an agreement with Sotheby’s to lease rather than sell off works from its museum’s $350m art collection.

“ED seriously injured late today when train hit car – Ritch”. When a shocked John Steinbeck received this telegram in May, 1948, he left immediately for Monterey, California, but by the time he got there his good friend Ed Ricketts, the man he later described as being “part of my brain for 18 years”, was dead.

EAST Anglia auctioneers Sworders have ceased holding sales in Sudbury. The former Olivers saleroom in Burkitt’s Lane, Sudbury will now become an office and storage facility with all future consignments removed for sale to Stansted Mountfitchet.