News topics

AN historic and important medieval scientific instrument, known as the Canterbury Quadrant, has been saved for the nation. St James’s specialist dealers Trevor Philip and Sons have sold the quadrant to the British Museum for £411,250.

Christie’s King Street devoted an entire day to traditional English furnishings when a 369-lot all-day sale of the collection of the late Simon Sainsbury was followed by a highly select, mixed-owner, 12-lot evening auction of what they termed “exceptional furniture”.

The latest addition to the London street art calendar took place at Village Underground in Shoreditch on June 17, where Dreweatts became the first auctioneer from outside London to host a dedicated Urban Art Sale.

THE man regarded as the world’s leading authority on Rembrandt has declared the self portrait that sold at auction in the Cotswolds for £2.2m last October as a genuine work by the Dutch master.

Christie’s English furniture day on June 18 was marked by the £9m auction of a dozen pieces of top-flight examples and by the 369-lot £13.6m sale of the collection of the late Simon Sainsbury.

A COLLECTION of furniture and objects from a grand Parisian townhouse will go under the hammer in France at the end of the month – courtesy of the Ivory Coast Government.

An entire day was devoted to glass by Bonhams earlier this month as they offered just shy of 500 lots of English and Continental glass in their Bond Street rooms.

AN influx of Russian buyers was in town last week to flex their wallets and work their way through a week-long series of Russian sales in four London rooms. On offer was a rich mix of paintings, Fabergé, arms and armour, porcelain, metalware and anything else the auction houses thought might tempt the Russian palate.

LEGISLATION that risks blighting the trade in a large number of cultural objects could soon be amended thanks to common ground between the art market and the Ministry of Defence.

A Chelsea antiques dealer has been badly injured after taking on an armed gang who smashed up his premises. Ian Towning, the owner of the Bourbon-Hanby Antique Centre, was subjected to months of intimidation, before he fought back when three men wielding sledgehammers and carrying a gun robbed the centre in Sydney Street, London SW3 on the afternoon of Monday June 9.

Morton and Eden have sold 41 Celtic gold coins found by a metal detectorist in Kent for £35,500. The coins, some of which are shown here, were found over a three-year period between 2003 and 2006, scattered over a ploughed field near Westerham in Kent, the precise location of which is being kept secret.

TWO very different scenes of cricket matches in progress sold recently at very different locations. The artists themselves could also hardly be more contrasting: Camille Pissarro (1830-1903) and L.S. Lowry (1887-1976).

APPRENTICE Andy Cunningham will be among those displaying their skills at the Open Weekend being held at the Edward Barnsley Workshop near Petersfield from June 21-22.

Sotheby’s New York and Christie's King Street both withdrew furniture lots provenanced to dealers John and Carlton Hobbs from sale last week – casualties of the unfolding "fake" furniture scandal first exposed by The Sunday Times.

As BBC cameras rolled for live television, Duke’s of Dorchester sold three pieces of purportedly ancient gold for a total of £56,000 on June 5. The consignment, rejected by at least one major London auction house before Duke’s accepted them, has been the source of much opinion since their sale was announced in late May.

A FRENCH court has ruled for the first time that eBay are directly responsible for what is sold on their website.

Hedge funds operating in the art market are shifting their investments from the medium to the short term. That is the view of Randall Willette, managing director of Fine Art Wealth Management Ltd, who was a keynote speaker at the 2008 Art Investment Conference at the London Business School.

François Nicole, the Geneva-based pioneer of the musical box, is thought to have made around 440 boxes during his working life, but only 60 are known today. Make that 61: courtesy of a local vendor another turned up at Cirencester auctioneer Moore Allen & Innocent on May 30.

THE auction record for an English clock was broken at Christie's Hong Kong last month when a late 18th century example by horologist Henry Borrell sold for HK$32m (£2.16m).

A NEW detailed survey of online art market information services concludes that they have a long way to go to be able to provide reliable information for art investors.