London

THE emphasis in two photograph auctions held last month was very much on 20th century material, although at both events the big money spinner came from their smaller 19th century sections in the form of collections of anthropological interest.

THE vicar of St Thomas the Apostle in Hanwell is appealing to dealers to look out for an altar cross stolen from the West London parish church on May 20.

SCATTERED amongst the colourfully decorated but fairly routine European-taste 18th century famille verte and famille rose bowls, plates and tea services that comprised the bulk of Christie’s King Street’s (19.5/12% buyer’s premium) 214-lot European collection of Chinese Export ceramics on May 11 was a handful of more unusual entries for which buyers paid a premium.

AT the beginning of September John Eskenazi, one of the leading dealers in Indian, Tibetan and South-East Asian art, will leave his gallery at 15 Old Bond Street, London W1 and deal by appointment only.

SOTHEBY’S Bond Street (20/12% buyer’s premium) took their first tentative step into the world of 20th century Asian art on May 6 with a 173-lot mixed-owner dispersal of Chinese, Japanese and Korean paintings, prints, posters, sculpture and ceramics on May 6.

IF you’ve walked through the glazed doors at Bonhams in Bond Street in the last month, you can’t have failed to notice the major effects of the six-month facelift to the premises. The international headquarters are now up and running with only a few finishing touches left to be made.

MAYFAIR antiquities dealer Rupert Wace is mounting possibly the most captivating June selling exhibition when, as one of the participants of the first London Sculpture Week, he presents Pharaoh’s Creatures: Animals from Ancient Egypt, at 14 Old Bond Street, London W1.

THE Ephemera Society holds its Summer Special Fair at Le Meridien Russell Hotel, Russell Square in London’s Bloomsbury on Sunday June 13. Expect more than 100 tables covered with greetings cards, newspapers, magazines, autographs, playbills, menus and all manner of paper collectables.

SMALLER, more modest events, I am sure, benefit from the big fairs in town. Visitors to the Hali fair, for example, may well find the London Antique Textiles, Tribal Art and Decorative Antiques Fair on Sunday June 6 at Hammersmith Town Hall in King Street, London W6 to their liking.

LITTLE wonder that London organisers Brian and Anna Haughton have such a soft spot for their annual International Ceramics Fair & Seminar, the 23rd of which will be staged from June 10 to 13 at The Commonwealth Centre in Kensington High Street, London W8.

OPENING with a grand private preview on June 8, and continuing until June 15, for the 70th year the Grosvenor House Art and Antiques Fair will run at The Great Room of the Grosvenor House hotel on Mayfair’s Park Lane. And, no doubt, it will show, once again, why it is the country’s top fair and one of the world’s top antiques events.

I CAN almost hear the grinding as dozens of art critics hone their sabres – it must be time for the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition!

EXPECTED to sell for £1m or more at Sotheby’s on June 22 is the Macclesfield Psalter, an unrecorded illuminated manuscript, made in England in the early 14th century, that came to light only when the saleroom was asked to sell the contents of the 18th century library of the Earls of Macclesfield at Shirburn Castle.

ALTHOUGH many of the items on offer by the nine dealers taking part in London Sculpture Week (June 10-18) are antique, with some dating back more than 5000 years, there will be a few contemporary pieces.

AN April 29 sale held by Bloomsbury Auctions presented an enormous selection of children’s, illustrated and private press books that ran to nearly 900 lots. While there was much to admire in the other sections of the sale, I shall concentrate on the children’s books for this report. A great many of the lots came from one fine collection in which many of the books contained a bookplate designed by Pauline Baynes.

INCREASINGLY, London is showing its teeth as one of the world’s nuclei for international Contemporary art. And, with last week’s opening of two substantial commercial art galleries, its status is going only one way – upwards.

POLICE have arrested a woman wanted for questioning in connection with a series of thefts from London antiques shops earlier this year.

INSURERS Axa Art have promised to settle claims linked to art lost in last week’s fire at Momart’s London warehouse as soon as possible.

WILD beasts, and tigers in particular, loomed large in the late Georgian imagination. They appear in a range of guises, from the fearful symmetry of William Blake’s Tyger to the almost cuddly features of the big cats modelled by Staffordshire potters for popular consumption.

The ABA’s annual Antiquarian Book Fair, which this year will be opened by the writer Frederick Forsyth, will run from June 3-6 at Olympia. Illustrated and/or very briefly described here are half a dozen items promised by dealers from Britain and the USA.