News

Brown furniture has proved hard to shift at auction in recent months but the success of this George I burr walnut chest on stand offered at the Bristol Auction Rooms on June 18 may signal the tide is turning.

Butterfields, the San Francisco auctioneers, who made the national press in March following the controversy over a Malcolm X archive, were front page material again in June following the sale of the only surviving parts from the atomic bomb dropped over Hiroshima.

FELLOWS and Sons, the Birmingham auctioneers, have refunded the buyers of three watercolours sold as the work of Prince Charles last week after the pictures were revealed as forgeries.

A CAMPAIGN to change the law could force the closure of antiques fairs that are currently allowed to operate without planning permission. The Campaign for the Protection of Rural England (CPRE) is targeting its initiatives at car boot sales, motorsport meets and clay pigeon shooting, but the proposed change would embrace antiques events too.

USA: THE West Coast of the United States is beefing up its auction presence with the opening of a new auction house in the San Francisco Bay area in August.

Helped by a £17.425m grant from the National Heritage Memorial Fund – the largest sum it has ever given – the National Trust announced last week that it had bought Tyntesfield, a Victorian neo-gothic country house near Bristol.

MUSIC makers, from Jaques Frères musical boxes to Würlitzer juke boxes, make their sometimes surprising mark at auction but although this German orchestrion, right was one of the most unusual pieces to come up at any English rooms, Market Harborough auctioneers Gildings (12.5% buyer’s premium) recognised it as a major money maker in their May 28 sale.