Art and antiques news from 2015

The upheaval at venerable Mayfair and Manhattan dealership Mallett continued at the end of 2015 with the departure of two senior executives.

The New York branch of Mallett and the company’s former director in the Big Apple, Henry Neville, are embroiled in the case brought by US authorities against Robert A Olins, the disgraced former chief executive of a technology company.

Sotheby’s have announced that Mario Tavella, deputy chairman of Sotheby’s Europe and European head of single-owner collections, will become président directeur général of Sotheby’s France.

The market for traditional antiques ended 2015 on a high with a series of spectacular individual prices posted in London and New York in mid-December.

Phillips set a new high for Martinware with the sale of this 14in (36cm) high bird jar modelled as Benjamin Disraeli for a double-estimate $190,000 (£126,670).

The Antiques Trade Gazette has hired a new reporter as the 45-year-old title continues its evolution online and in print. Frances Allitt, a fine art underwriter and magazine columnist, starts on January 11.

As an introductory offer to their new saleroom near Poole, Cottees will be reducing both their seller’s commission and buyer’s premium to 10% (plus VAT) for the first three months of 2016.

Three men have been sentenced to jail for their parts in a spree of antiques thefts perpetrated in January 2014 across the south of England.

The British Antique Dealers’ Association is p09nning to mount a campaign with other business bodies to halt a government plan to require all businesses, regardless of size, to file tax returns on a quarterly, digital basis rather than annually.

ATG Media, parent of the Antiques Trade Gazette, and Mail Boxes Etc have joined forces to provide a new delivery service for buyers on thesaleroom.com.

The Law Commission, the independent body which reviews laws in England and Wales, have recommended to the government that the term ‘antique firearm’ be defined in statute for the first time.

Hansons of Etwall in Derbyshire posted a new house record in the closing days of 2015 with the sale of a 13in (32cm) high Qianlong (1736-95) mark and period famille rose vase for £300,000.

Sotheby’s are to make some 80 positions redundant as part of the company’s efforts to reduce costs.

The Provincial Booksellers Fairs Association (PBFA) has begun to collect funds to support the wife and young children of the late Justin Skrebowski.

A retired academic and art lecturer has been handed a six-month suspended sentence after admitting to forging a number of Grosvenor School linocut prints and attempting to pass them off as genuine through various auction houses.

One of the most ambitious dealer selling exhibitions of recent memory – the Tom Scott collection of clocks at Carter Marsh – has concluded with market-defining sales for the Winchester dealership.

A Union flag, by repute flown by one of Nelson’s warships at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805, carries an estimate of £30,000-50,000 at sporting gun specialists Holt’s on March 17.

This gold and peacock blue enamel necklace designed by Archibald Knox sold for £31,000 at Mallams in Oxford.

Silver and jewellery with a total value of around £20,000 was stolen in a raid at Chilcotts auctioneers in Honiton, Devon, in the early hours of Friday, December 4.

Among the works drawing interest at the latest round of Old Master and British Paintings sales in London was Joseph Wright of Derby’s (1734-97) ‘A grotto in the gulf of Salerno...’.