Events and conferences

THE British Antiques and Collectables Award winners have been announced for 2004, making Dreweatt Neate the first firm to win an auction house award twice.

SINCE 1986 Christopher Gange has been a dealer in 20th Century British Art at his Katharine House Gallery at The Parade, Marlborough, Wiltshire, but for the month of July, in a new departure, he is holding an important selling exhibition of British Studio Pottery, formerly part of his private collection.

CELEBRATING 15 years trading in their present premises, Anne and William Morris, who operate as Ruskin Decorative Arts, have a summer selling exhibition at 5 Talbot Court, Stow-on-the-Wold from July 17 to 25.

WHAT do the Society of Women Artists (SWA), founded in 1855, and Royal Society of Miniature Painters, Sculptors and Gravers (RMS), founded in 1896, have in common?

IT is not often that an antiques dealer ends up on the walls of the National Portrait Gallery, but until September 19 that is just what is happening.

FOLLOWING last year’s inaugural, successful summer show of graduate student’s work, The Metal Gallery at 90 Mount Street, London W1 have declared this an annual event and this year’s selling exhibition, The Graduate 2004, will run from July 21 to September 11.

THE considerable coverage given to Asia Week in London, on these pages and in the national press, rather neglected one gallery which was bringing the art of the Orient to London long before the Asia week promotion was thought of.

THE work of the pioneering Victorian designer Christopher Dresser is soon to have a major public airing in an exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum opening this September. In the meantime the rarest examples of his iconic designs continue to command high prices in the marketplace.

EDINBURGH dealer Andrew Fletcher, who as Twentieth Century Antiques specialises in original works from 1920-1970, normally trades via his website or by appointment, but for the duration of the Edinburgh Festival he is taking space at Concrete Butterfly, a large complex at 317-319 Cowgate in the Old Town which retails furniture and interior design.

THE British Antiques & Collectables Awards 2004 shortlist has been published, with the winners due to be announced at the beginning of August.

Silver made in London has borne the distinctive leopard symbol hallmark since 1300 AD, making it one of the earliest forms of consumer protection.

AFTER the first couple of days, all nine dealers participating in London Sculpture Week (which ended on June 18) reported a great deal of interest in their exhibitions with old clients joined by museum people and, most importantly, new customers.

IN one of the most crowded week’s in London’s arts and antiques calendar, the Grosvenor House and Olympia fairs are still in full swing. Some may ask if we need more in the way of dealers’ selling exhibitions but they would get a dusty reply from the trade.

GAZETTE journalist Scott Reyburn will find himself the subject of scrutiny rather than being the scrutineer for a change thanks to his contribution to So This Is London, an exhibition that forms part of Art Fortnight London.

AN instrument maker from Manchester, who switched careers four years ago to become a clockmaker, has won a £13,250 Queen Elizabeth Scholarship to attend a specialist clock restoration course.

WOW! The Royal Academy Summer Exhibition is really different this year. Well, the colour scheme is, anyway.

Pictured right is the highlight of what turned out to be London’s Asia Week’s most successful auction.

BRUSSELS have two similar events this month, both of which are festivals rather than fairs, with specialist dealers mounting concurrent selling exhibitions, promoted jointly, and also inviting overseas specialists in the same discipline to show as guests in the Brussels galleries.

HERE is some information about one of the unqualified recent successes of the London ceramics scene, Eight Days in June, a concurrent series of exhibitions held by four leading Kensington dealers from June 7 to 15.

EAST Anglian early furniture specialist Andrew Singleton has, for many years, held a popular pre-Christmas selling exhibition at his shop, Suffolk House Antiques, in Yoxford High Street, and following the consistent success of these shows he is staging a summer version, opening on June 12 and running for a week.