Features

Auctioneers from across the UK attend trade association SOFAA's biennial yacht club dinner.

The success of timed online auctions for London’s big auction houses is putting the format on the map for other salerooms too.

Whether it’s delivering a 12ft long model ship or taking a dining table from Paris to London, getting a prized item from A to B safely is vital. We also report on latest developments in art insurance.

ATG asked practitioners to explain the ins and outs of this increasingly popular auction format.

Sotheby’s is showing a growing commitment to the timed-online format.

A new insurance policy targeting dealers who do not work in traditional galleries has been launched by London and Lymington brokers Hallett Independent,.

The principle of insurance is to put you back into the position that you were in before the loss occurred. This can be challenging when navigating the art market, writes Dr Abigail Price.

We have recently acted for a number of clients who either have had the misfortune of having to call on their insurance when a piece of artwork has been damaged or where we have been instructed by insurers to bring a swift resolution to a spurious claim, writes Rudy Capildeo.

While fairs remain a vital part of the art market calendar, the rich series of gallery selling exhibitions in Mayfair and St James’s this summer offer more chances to view and buy – at a different pace.

Britain still has many ‘antiques’ towns and streets – those picturesque corners of the island populated by shops, galleries and centres that together act as a magnet for antiques tourists. Two of the largest communities of dealers close to London are Petworth and Hungerford, while a busy schedule of regular fairs and markets takes place to the south-west of London.

Housed in a remarkable purpose-built marquee, Masterpiece London returns to the grounds of the Royal Hospital in Chelsea for its tenth anniversary

For close to three centuries buyers of art and antiques have been spoilt for choice in London. A city synonymous with archives, galleries, museums, conservators and curators, it continues to support long-standing streets of antiques dealers, centres and a plethora of regular fairs and markets. As this guide to the hotspots suggests, most of them are complementary rather than in competition, and all budgets are catered for.

For the British art and antiques trade, the summer ‘season’ still carries plenty of resonance, particularly in London. The days of rowing club colours at Henley and Georgian walnut at the Grosvenor House Hotel have given way to the plethora of June and July showpiece auctions and a clutch of fairs and dealer-led events – London Art Week, Olympia, Masterpiece London, and new kid on the block Fair For Saatchi.

With a longer run and back to being branded as an independent event, the venerable Art & Antiques Fair Olympia remains a stalwart for both the collector’s market and the decorative trade.

As the battle for the ‘middle market’ heats up, the London auction scene today offers visitors a wider choice of items to buy and more places to bid for them.

Desmond Morris on his many lives as a zoologist, painter, author and collector

Golden Age collaboration between two London clockmakers leads a look at the market including hammer highlights, auction previews and dealer news.

Eardley Norton, who is listed at 49 St John’s Street, Clerkenwell between 1762- 94, enjoyed a reputation as a skilled mechanic and the maker of complex timepieces, sometimes with musical and astronomical movements.

The series of Victorian carriage clocks by James McCabe – the son of a Belfast clockmaker of the same name who came to London in the 1770s and worked at the Royal Exchange from 1804 – are typically beautifully made with exemplary twin fusee striking movements.

Kensington Church Street clock dealer Howard Walwyn will offer this previously unknown Thomas Tompion walnut and mulberry longcase at the Masterpiece fair in London.