News

A DRAWING by E.H. Shepard of Winnie the Pooh playing a balalaika raised bidding on a third edition of The House at Pooh Corner to £7000 in the Greenslade Taylor Hunt sale of November 13 – and although nothing else in the 825-lot Taunton catalogue came remotely close to that in financial terms, a few other lots deserve mention.

The Art Deco Fair at Battersea Old Town Hall in South London is to have a new lease of life now ownership has passed to Nottingham-based Nick Cox of Abbey Fairs from Welsh-based organiser Anne Zierold. Abbey host their first Battersea fair on February 15 and Nick, who organises four other Deco events, promises some drastic changes “to bring the fair into the 21st century”.

LONDON dealer Caroline de Kerangal is happy dealing from home and a couple of times a year at the decorative fair in Battersea Park, but she occasionally gets the urge to work from a shop, and it appears to be a seasonal thing.

By a vote of 9-6 the member states of the European Union opted to shelve plans to change current laws relating to the hallmarking of precious metals. The decision not to proceed with the controversial Precious Metals Directive, taken on November 21, was welcomed by British hallmarkers, anxious to preserve one of the nation’s earliest forms of consumer protection.

The Great Exhibition of 1851: A Nation on Display by Jeffrey A. Auerbach, published by Yale University Press. ISBN 0300080077 £35hb

The Rothschilds were spread so extensively across Europe that it is perhaps not surprising to see dispersals from different branches of this extended pan-European family peppering the auction calendar.

The Story of the Golf Ball by Kevin McGimpsey, published by Kevin McGimpsey in association with Philip Wilson Publishers. ISBN 0856675661 £49hb