Dealers

MADAM – Your news story (‘Ivory removed from Chippendale before sale’, ATG No 2356) draws attention to the deliberate and unforgivable removal of original ivory elements from an important commode by Thomas Chippendale, England’s most famous cabinet maker.

An art dealership that sold a portrait of Napoleon’s brother-in-law to The Frick Collection in New York has strongly criticised Italy’s decision to retrospectively rescind its export licence.

BADA and LAPADA have alerted their members that any business with an annual taxable turnover more than the VAT registration threshold (currently £85,000) should keep digital records.

Mullany Haute Epoque Fine Art opens the doors to its new gallery on Bury Street, St James’s, this autumn, taking the premises formerly occupied by a silver dealership.

When is the right time to buy a piece of rare antique silver – a George III caviar dish, say?

Jeremy Astfalck of The Old Corkscrew is a specialist silver dealer with a business encompassing all areas of the 19th and 20th century decorative arts genre. He is among the dealers at this month’s LAPADA Art & Antiques Fair.

Mayfair gallery Connaught Brown is staging the first solo exhibition of French Neo-Impressionist and Symbolist painter Henri Martin (1860-1943) to take place in London for a number of years.

A late 19th century kingwood and ormolu mounted jardinière, offered for £4995 by Mark Buckley Antiques of Ilkley, is among the pieces on show at Galloway Fairs’ next event at Duncombe Park.

A prominent figure in the early furniture trade, Peter Bontoft of William H Stokes Antiques, died suddenly of a heart attack, on July 29. He was 73.

As well as the themed shows, some of which are detailed on these two pages, this year’s Parcours has a loan exhibition that goes to the roots of the French tribal art collecting.

Thirty dealers will be showing off the many striking elements of Art Deco at English Heritage’s two-day fair on Saturday and Sunday, September 8-9.

The Left Bank area known as the Carré Rive Gauche is a group of streets in the 6th and 7th arrondissements between the Seine and the Boulevard Saint Germain – notably the rues du Bac, de Beaune, de Lille, du Pré-aux-Clercs, des Saints-Pères, de l’Université, de Verneuil and the quai Voltaire.

While many Paris galleries take part in fairs or parcours, there is no shortage of dealers who launch individual exhibitions in their galleries at the rentrée.

Specialist dealer in Oceanic art Anthony Meyer, whose gallery is in the rue des Beaux Arts on the Left Bank, is one of the Paris dealers who is doubly busy this September.

Fair aims to capitalise on the event’s past heritage and more recent major innovations.

Other exhibitions launching this September include 'Forces et Mouvements' at Galerie François Léage, a fifth-generation dealership on the well-known rue du faubourg Saint-Honoré.

Created to impress and instruct, textiles played an important role in the history of the Catholic Church.

'Elements of Foliate Heads' will be instantly familiar to fans of John Piper (1903-92), despite the fact that the picture has not been on the market for more than half a century.