UK

BOOKS, manuscripts and photographs from The Old Rectory, at Banningham in Norfolk, provided a separately catalogued section of a three-day March 21-23 contents sale conducted by Bonhams and represented 70 years of collecting by the owner, picture restorer Bryan Hall, and his father, the Rev. William Hall, who was at one time Vicar of Barton Turf and Smallburgh.

Christie’s South Kensington (19.5/12% buyer’s premium) hold three Scientific Instruments sale a year but reserve the spring sale for a restricted number of high-quality objects. Tom Newth, head of the department, reports the market picking up in the last six months, with strong competition for microscopes and Islamic astronomical instruments.

FOR more than 20 years Hallidays have been holding selling exhibitions at their picturesque Oxfordshire showrooms at The Old College, Dorchester-on-Thames. Over the years to broaden the appeal they have invited guest specialist dealers to participate in the shows.

THERE was no doubt about which were the two outstanding lots at Hamptons’ (15% buyer’s premium) March 24 picture sale in Godalming.

FEW organisers are reluctant to blow their own trumpet, but Barry Phillips, who as Camfair puts together the monthly antiques fair at The Castle Hall, Hertford, admits he has been a bit too quiet about what he calls “Hertfordshire’s best-kept secret”.

THE strength of the decorative market was underlined by a number of lots offered by Woolley & Wallis, (15% buyer’s premium) on March 16, including the day’s best seller, a pair of c.1860 bronze and ormolu twin-light candelabra, one shown right.

SIX lots from Bonhams' (17.5/10% buyer's premium) March 22-24 sale at The Old Rectory, Banningham will be making their way back whence they came, National Trust curators having identified them (Bonhams had only spotted one) as having been bought by the Rev. Hall & Son at the 1951 contents sale of Oxburgh Hall in Norfolk. The house now belongs to the Trust which rescued it from demolition.

THE March 5 sale at Dee Atkinson & Harrison's (10% buyer's premium) West Yorkshire saleroom was the first antiques offering of the year and, after an 83 per cent selling rate on nearly 700 lots, the auctioneers took encouragement from the way the market seemed to be picking up, with furniture, at last, edging out of the doldrums.

TOWARDS the end of March it was reported that The British Museum and the V&A had joined forces for the first time to acquire a rare Indian 7th century metal statue of a standing figure of the Buddha Sakyamuni, the first to enter a public European collection. After a tour of provincial museums it will be shown alternatively at the two institutions.

THERE were signs of an improving trade climate at the Antiques For Everyone fair held at Birmingham’s National Exhibition Centre from April 15 to 18, and this is particularly significant at the country’s largest vetted antiques event.

DEALERS at the Saffron Walden Antiques Centre have offered a reward of up to £10,000 for information leading to the return of their stock and the capture of the burglars who stole it.

BONHAMS notched up a clutch of auction records and an impressive £1.28m total for the Albion Collection of portrait miniatures in Bond Street on April 22.

THE importance of exercising due diligence has been driven home in the most painful way for a dealer, whose oversight has cost them £12,000.

IN these days of global marketing and online bidding it is reassuring to know that, just occasionally, with some wit and a little good fortune, one can still make a good wage from a solitary find at the local auction room.

Right: this Morris & Co. tapestry titled Greenery sold for £180,000 (plus 17.5/10 per cent buyer’s premium) at Edinburgh auctioneers Lyon and Turnbull on April 21. The outstanding lot of the firm’s Decorative Arts sale was sold to a buyer from the London area, who said: “I fell in love with it the moment I saw it and just had to have it, it is a beautiful thing and worth every penny.”

THIS Saturday (May 1) Thomson Roddick & Medcalf will be selling the entire stock-in-trade of Edinburgh restorer and cabinetmaker William Trist at its Esbank saleroom.

THIS Sunday, April 25, South London organisers P&A Antiques launch The Brocante Antiques Market at Chelsea Village Hotel at Stamford Bridge, the Chelsea football ground, with about 45 dealers, a number of them coming over from France.

BUCKINGHAMSHIRE organisers Midas Fairs are relaunching their long-standing two-day Spring Bank Holiday fair at The Bellhouse Hotel in Beaconsfield next month. The previously popular partially standfitted event returns on May 30 and 31 after a year off, due to what Joy Alder of Midas describes as “circumstances beyond the organiser’s control”.

Though the catalogue did contain a selection of antiquarian and collectable books of a general nature, the March 31 sale held by Hampton & Littlewood of Exeter was notable for two specialised collections – the Ron Morris collection of magic lanterns, optical toys and related books and ephemera, and the collection of costume and fashion books formed by the late Janet Hill.

NOW in its ninth year, Caroline Penman’s Chelsea Art Fair will be held at Chelsea Old Town Hall on the King’s Road, London SW3, from April 22 to 25.