London

APPEAL Court judges have lifted the punishment given to a London dealer convicted of handling £1.5m worth of stolen silver after hearing how he had committed the crimes in order to pay for his wife’s cancer treatment.

Islamic works of art have not just been wowing collectors in the auction rooms, the museum- and exhibition-going public have also plainly found it a big and topical attraction.

SALES of antique and decorative carpets traditionally accompany London’s Islamic series and all three participating salerooms offered selections last month. Christie’s King Street had the biggest and most expensive sale: a 269-lot gathering on April 29 that netted £1.78m. It also recorded the highest selling rates, although at 68 per cent by volume and 81 by value, they were not quite as strong as for the works of art offering two days earlier.

PIMLICO dealer Appley Hoare unveils her new stock of antique garden items and associated antiques at her eponymous shop at 30 Pimlico Road, London SW1 on the evening of May 24; her selling Summer Garden Exhibition will continue at the gallery well into the summer.

TWO of the biggest names in British art will mastermind this year’s Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, which will run at the Academy’s galleries on London’s Piccadilly from June 8 to 16.

AFTER 25 years mounting monthly fairs at Chelsea Town Hall in the King’s Road, London SW3, Hove-based Cindy Mainwaring, of Mainwaring Antiques Fairs, is introducing a new dimension.

TO mount six major selling exhibitions in the space of eight years of paintings by iconic British 20th century artist L.S. Lowry (1887-1976) is, by any standards, impressive. Nonetheless, this is exactly what New Bond Street dealer Richard Green has done. His latest Lowry showcase opens this Wednesday, May 19.

A travel sale held by Christie’s South Kensington on April 29 was a mix of books, prints and pictures and seen here are two items from a section of that sale devoted to the Alpine regions.

ATTENDANCE figures of 4243 at The 9th Annual Chelsea Art Fair, a Caroline Penman event at Chelsea Old Town Hall, were slightly up on last year, as were items sold (435), with many of the 45 exhibitors reporting reasonable sales.

THE Earls Court and Olympia exhibition complexes are now under new ownership following a £245m deal which was completed last week.

Illustrated right is part of a group of fragmentary Greek and Coptic papyri, dating from the 4th-9th century AD and comprising mainly Coptic accounts, lists of names, literary fragments and two Greek biblical extracts, together with three narrow linen bandages inscribed in ink in late hieratic with spells from the Book of the Dead, c.3rd-1st century BC – offered as a single lot in a Christie’s antiquities sale, of April 27.

SOMETIMES the significance of important commemorative pieces, which must have been so obvious at the time of their manufacture, remains something of a mystery to modern day collectors.

IF the hallmark of the perfect evening is the correct blend of food, wine, company and entertainment, now is the time to book tickets for the the RICS Grand Summer Dinner, scheduled for June 30.

THIS Sunday May 16, the second London Photograph Fair of the year will take place in Bloomsbury at the Bonnington Hotel in Southampton Row.

DIX Noonan Webb’s March 17 sale offered exactly 1700 lots, making for a very long day. But just about every branch of numismatic endeavour was catered for. So comprehensive was this sale that only a flavour of the dispersal can be covered here.

THIS spring season Spink’s have had some hard-hitting sales and it has to be said that the market for the best British material has become very buoyant over the last year or so.

ALREADY well-known for their two selling exhibitions a year, The Antique Trader, who work out of The Millinery Works, 85/87 Southgate Road in Islington, London N1, should consolidate their reputation for commercial yet well- researched shows with The Arts and Crafts Movement: The Core Years 1880-1910 which runs from June 2 to 27.

THIS Sunday May 16 will see, for the third time, Vintage Mayfair Frozen in Fashion being held in the Music Room of Grays Antique Market at 26 South Molton Lane, London W1, just two minutes from Bond Street tube station.

ALEXANDER Walker, who died last year at the age of 73, was the film critic of London’s Evening Standard for more than 40 years and among the well-known names in the film world. Not so well known is that he was a noted collector of modern art.

RUSSIAN interest in their own heritage propelled the prices of two Imperial Russian subjects in the Albion collection, sold at Bonhams' (19.5/10% buyer's premium) New Bond Street rooms on April 22, to very high levels.