UK

BONHAMS will auction off the contents of the Savoy Hotel on the premises in London in a three-day sale just days after it closes for a £100 million refurbishment.

IT was the first war painting by a Scottish artist to be exhibited in Scotland and was extensively discussed in the Edinburgh and Glasgow newspapers of January 1941.

A pair of 19th century Venetian views by Italian artist Francesco Zanin proved to be the high point of a Silver Jubilee auction held by Ewbank auctioneers of Surrey on September 20 and provided their owner, a local Dorking family, with an unexpected financial bonus when they sold for multiples of their original estimates.

THERE is a temporary Tuesday date change for Sunbury Antiques Market at Kempton Park Racecourse.

Asian Art in London celebrates its tenth anniversary from November 1 to 10 and as part of the anniversary celebrations will join with the British Museum to hold a Study Day around the exhibition The First Emperor: China’s Terracotta Army on November 10. Tickets for the day cost £22 (contact 0207 323 8181).

Dealers make up fair’s management board

AT Bristol Crown Court last week Torquay art dealer Colin Stodgell was jailed for three years for income tax fraud amounting to £750,000 over seven years.

When Wales’ most popular 20th century artist Sir Kyffin Williams passed away last year he bequeathed the furniture from his Anglesey home to the University College of North Wales. Numerous pieces that the University did not require turned up in The Wales and West Country Sale at Bonhams Bath on June 25.

The Goldsmiths’ Company has announced a proposal to establish a major new centre for jewellery and silversmithing in the heart of Clerkenwell.

LONDON art dealer Peter Nahum is offering for sale his St James’s business. The Leicester Galleries Ltd, originally founded in 1902 and now with an international reputation for 19th and 20th century British and Eurpean art.

This 18th century needlework panel appears to be a fragment of a work conceived on almost Bayeux Tapestry proportions.

After over 30 years at Hepper House, Bonhams have relocated in Leeds.

Some of the heat may have left the Jack Vettriano (b.1951) market since his Singing Butler made £660,000 in April 2004, but Sotheby’s nevertheless posted the second highest price ever paid for the artist at auction when they sold Bluebird at Bonneville for £400,000 (plus premium) – the top lot of the firm’s annual sale at the Gleneagles Hotel in Perthshire on the evening of August 29.

Cheshire auctioneer Sir Patrick Cheyne will sell a remarkable cache of work by the Sheffield School watercolourist George Hamilton Constantine (1878-1967) on September 7.

ELTHAM Palace in Greenwich is fully booked on Sunday, September 9 for its regular biannual Art Deco Fair with 15 specialist Deco dealers, including the Design Gallery of Westerham.

West Sussex auctioneers Worthing Auction Galleries and Scarborough Fine Art are to merge.

As of September 1, the Penkridge Salerooms come under new ownership.

A substantial reward is being offered for the return of a George III ormolu and white marble table clock by Matthew Boulton stolen from Knightsbridge dealership Hotspur on the afternoon of Wednesday, August 22.

The Frieze art fair (October 11-14) at Regents Park has already spawned two ‘tailgate’ events in the form of Scope and Zoo, but this year’s new addition is a little different.

JS Auctions are having to cease operations at their Cotefield Farm premises in Bodicote near Banbury.