Ireland

IN a world where instant electronic communication and exchange of information is available to all, two lengths of original Morse code ticker-tape seem akin to tele-antiquities.

Becoming the most expensive painting ever sold in Ireland, A Fair Day, Mayo by Jack Butler Yeats (1871-1957) was knocked down at €1m (£917,430) at Adam's lastest sale in Dublin.

INTERNATIONAL Coin Exchange, a new firm of Dublin-based auctioneers, will hold their first sale on February 19.

IS there still life in the Irish art market? The auction record for a piece of sculpture by an Irish artist was broken at Adam's 140-lot sale of Irish art on October 14.

The Irish Government have decided to go the same way as the UK in not applying the Artist’s Resale Right (ARR) to the heirs of dead artists until 2012. The extension means that ARR will continue to apply to works by living artists only.

Nearly two years after its rushed introduction in the Republic of Ireland, the Artist’s Resale Right is still causing confusion among auctioneers, dealers, artists and aministrators.

Adams of Dublin were once again top of the Irish rooms posting a €19.4m (£14.6m) hammer turnover for 2007.

DUBLIN auctioneers James Adam have negotiated a €3.5m (£2.4m) sale of remarkable papers setting a record for a single transaction of documents relating to the 1916 Easter Rising.

Dublin fine art auctioneers James Adam’s are to join forces with premier bloodstock sales company, Goffs, to host Ireland’s first specialist sporting sale in October.

The 2001 Irish heritage laws are again being tested after a local council announced its intent to stop the sale of an 18th century fireplace on the grounds that – although not fitted in the property until the early 1970s – it is now an essential feature of the house.

Sara Kenny, a former director of the fine art department at Hamilton Osbourne King, is to conduct her first major sale since the Dublin property giants pulled out of the auction business in August last year.

“It is indeed a lovely spot of earth, lonely and secluded; the wood full of game, the lake full of fish, and nature full of poetry.” Luggala, as so eloquently observed by Hermann, Prince von Pückler-Muskau after a visit in 1828, is one of the most beautiful private estates in Ireland.

The ownership of this c.1760 Irish mahogany side table was traced by the late Sir Charles Brett, a prominent Ulster attorney and leading Irish historian, to his descendent Charles Brett of Belfast (1752-1829). He was a wine merchant in Belfast and Bordeaux in the 1780s and his many business concerns included interests in the Belfast Glass Works, Distillery, Chamber of Commerce and Shipping.

...and I’ll fight it in the courts if I have to

Strengthening their position as Ireland’s largest auction house, James Adam & Sons have been assigned the fine art business of major Dublin rival and property giant Hamilton Osborne King.

Unusually large at 2ft 2in (66cm) high x 21in (53cm) in diameter and notable for its carved scallop shell intaglio, this outstanding George III mahogany and brass bound peat bucket shot to €145,000 (£106,600) at James Adam of Dublin on March 15.

“FAIRS here are not as big by any means as those in the UK. The biggest regular fairs would have between 30 and 45 dealers and even the annual equivalent of a LAPADA fair would only have about 40 dealers or so.”

THE highlight of a Gerald and Sheila Goldberg collection of predominately Irish decorative arts sold by Mealy’s in Douglas, Cork earlier this month was this finely-preserved Aubusson tapestry, right, designed by Louis le Brocquy (b.1916).

THE Dowager Lady Langham, who authorised the HOK (18.5% buyer's premium) sale of the Langham family’s collections on September 27, is a world authority on Belleek having been collector/dealer for many years and having written three books on the subject. At the sale she only parted company with nine pieces of the Fermanagh pottery, most of which sold above expectations.

POLICE have alerted dealers across Ireland to a cache of antiques stolen in a weekend raid at the home of Lord Henry Mountcharles on his Slane Castle estate in County Meath.