International

MASSACHUSETTS has become the 14th state to ban the sale of novelty cigarette lighters.

A COLLECTION of 85 bosuns’ calls was among items stolen from a home in Milan in early August. Most of the calls were British, but there were also examples from the USA, Italy, China and India.

THE October 8 toy sale at Nagel in Stuttgart will include this Märklin gauge-1 model of the Stuttgart train station.

DEALERS Down Under have successfully fought off the recommendations of a government report that threatened to disrupt the status quo in the Australian art market.

THE Viennese mahogany commode, pictured here at the top, has undergone a remarkable transformation since it sold along with its companion pair at auction in 1993 as part of the Thurn and Taxis sale.

DISGRACED New York art dealer Lawrence Salander has been jailed for a minimum of six years after pleading guilty to orchestrating one of the world’s biggest ever art frauds.

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.

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.

A SERIES of guidelines designed to encourage standard and proper practice in the fine art auction industry in China were unveiled on June 31. They are the first measures of their type since sales by auction were permitted to resume in the People’s Republic 23 years ago.

INVESTORS and artists in Australia are in uproar at proposals to ban self-managed pensions from putting their money in art.

THE Art and Antique Dealers League of America are to launch a new antiques fair at the Park Avenue Armory on Manhattan’s Park Avenue from April 28 to May 2 next year.

IT may have been an exceptional piece that generated an equally exceptional level of presale interest but, even still, few people present at Christie's Paris for the sale of Amedeo Modigliai's (1884-1920) Tête were expecting it to become the most expensive work of art ever sold at auction in France.

THE troubled internet entrepreneur and art collector Halsey Minor, who in March was ordered to hand over $6.6m for unpaid items ‘bought’ at Sotheby’s, has won a parallel legal battle with Christie’s.

BEIJING auctioneers Poly established a new milestone for Chinese art on June 3 selling a 38ft (15m) long calligraphic hand scroll by a Song Dynasty master for RMB390m ($57.4m) plus 12 per cent buyer's premium.

WITH the retreat from Dunkirk so much in the news at the moment, Aguttes have a particularly topical offering in their June 18 sale of manuscripts, postcards and historical documents.

PRIMARY source material relating to the last days of Napoleon’s life has emerged at a charity valuation event in New Zealand and will be offered for sale on June 29. The consignment of more than 40 items includes a lock of Napoleon’s hair and a sketch of the former emperor on his deathbed drawn from life.

WHAT is thought to be a long-lost work by Caspar David Friedrich (1774-1840) is at the centre of a legal imbroglio after being offered for auction in France with an estimate of 80-100 euros.

FIVE modern paintings, thought to be worth a total of over £90m, were stolen during the night of May 19-20 from the City of Paris Modern Art Museum.

A SPECIAL addition to Christie’s mid-season Old Masters and 19th century art sale in New York on June 9 is what the auctioneers describe as “an exceptional selection of European paintings and sculpture” from the former Salander-O’Reilly Galleries in Manhattan.