Art and antiques news from 2015

This spectacular barn find, an ebonised coromandel and inlaid octagonal centre table designed by Edward Godwin (1833-86), sold for £31,000 at Sworders’ sale of decorative art and design in Stansted Mountfitchet.

Sports specialist Graham Budd struck gold in his latest sale by setting an Olympic torch auction record.

An oil on panel by Franz Sedlacek (1891-1945), one of Austria’s most prominent artists during the 1920s and ‘30s, will be offered in West Sussex auctioneers Toovey’s sale.

A previously unpublished book of ceramic designs that could shed new light on the work of Dr Christopher Dresser goes on public view for the first time during a three-day festival celebrating the life and work of the Victorian designer.

Antiques Trade Gazette will be at Art Antiques London this week and next week. Come and meet the team at the fair’s preview day (entrance by invitation only) on Thursday June 11 and on Monday June 15 from 11am.

The slump in the Russian art market was laid bare last week. The total for the latest auction series in London was a third of the equivalent sales in 2014.

The Ashmolean Museum in Oxford has launched a public campaign to raise the funds needed to secure JMW Turner's The High Street, Oxford.

Auctioneers Dreweatts-Bloomsbury are to make increasing use of Ely House – Mallett’s showroom on Dover Street – as their primary London sale venue.

Max Liebermann’s ‘Zwei Reiter am Strand nach links’ (Two Riders on a Beach) has become the first painting to be sold from Cornelius Gurlitt’s hoard of art.

Bonhams are to launch a series of multi-disciplined sales for British and European decorative arts in their flagship New Bond Street rooms.

Found in the attic of a large Welsh house, this watercolour by Thomas Girtin (1775-1802) of St Paul’s Cathedral drew dramatic competition at Chorley’s sale in Gloucestershire.

The tribal art dealer Anthony JP Meyer, who specialises in Oceanic art, has a gallery on the rue des Beaux Arts in the heart of Paris’ Left Bank dealer district. He is a regular at ‘TEFAF Maastricht’ and at the Paris tribal trail known as the ‘Parcours des Mondes’, which takes place in September. Here he discusses with Anne Crane of Antiques Trade Gazette how his interest in the field started, his views on collecting and the tribal market.

Stamp specialists Stanley Gibbons and coin specialists AH Baldwin and Sons are both exhibiting at this year’s ‘Masterpiece London’ fair for the first time.

A new twist has emerged in the long-running story of the ‘six sixes’ cricket ball.

The third annual ‘Art Crime and Cultural Heritage Symposium’ will be held in New York on June 4-6.

The work of designer and architect William Arthur Smith Benson (1854-1924) entered a new price arena when this silvered brass ceiling light sold for £23,000 at Mallams Oxford.

Sotheby’s will hold a sale of the Bernheimer family collection in November and Konrad Bernheimer has announced the family’s Munich art dealership will move from its traditional Old Master specialism to concentrate on Modern and Contemporary art under the direction of his daughters.

The highlight of the latest Woolley & Wallis sale of Asian art held in Salisbury was this 4in (10cm) Yongzheng (1723-35) mark and period doucai lingzhi bowl.

More than 60 artefacts stolen from English and Welsh country churches over the past few years have been recovered by police after they were alerted by a collector.

Sotheby’s latest set of results give the first indication of how Tad Smith will direct the company.