News

HOLLOWAYS of Banbury are set to re-open their doors after a £100,000 refurbishment. The project, which started in January and was due for completion as the Antiques Trade Gazette went to press, focused on improving facilities for both viewings and the sales themselves.

AS the antiquities trade brace themselves to cope with the fall-out of the mass looting of artefacts in Iraq, a UK stolen art database takes centre stage once more. Trade organisations in Britain and around the world have acted immediately to ensure members follow guidelines that will prevent any dealing in pieces that may have been looted during the recent Iraq war.

Illustrated are a pair of ice pails, covers and liners from the Duke of Newcastle’s Derby porcelain service, c.1797, dispersed by Mellors and Kirk in Nottingham on April 10.

Among the miniatures and novelties at Dreweatt Neate’s 2 April sale, there was especial interest in a 37-lot private collection of card-cases amassed over 50 years by an Oxfordshire vendor.

FRENCH auctioneers are trying to build links with the British Art Market Federation to campaign against damaging European Union regulations which are driving business across the Atlantic to the USA.

A private collection of 99 microscopes was the highlight of this three-day sale at John Bellmans. No fewer than nine examples realised four-figure sums, the best seller being a 19th century lacquered brass binocular petrological microscope by Watson & Sons which sold to a private collector from London at £3100.

Two early watercolour drawings of rabbits in snowy settings were offered as part of a Bonhams sale of April 1. That seen right shows one rabbit making a snowball while another leans on a fence, while in the illustration reproduced below right, the two rabbits are building a snowman.