News

SOUTH AFRICA: A new auction house is opening in South Africa. Charles Rudd, who for the past seven years was an auctioneer and valuer at Ashbey’s Galleries in Cape Town, plans to conduct his own regular monthly catalogue sales in Cape Town starting on February 3.

UK: Fraser Glennie Fine Arts, the auction arm of the Circencester-based surveyors and estate agents, are to join the Cotswold Auction Company.

Ebay are warning their users to be vigilant after users of PayPal fell victim to a hi-tech scam in November and December. Many received a replicating virus that, camouflaged as an email from the online payment provider, tried to trick the recipient into sending sensitive information.

HOPES of establishing a national database of stolen art have taken a significant step forward. MPs on the parliamentary committee who recommended the database be set up three years ago gave the project a new boost after publicly criticising the Government for failing to act despite promises to do so.

FRANCE’S new auction watchdog has flexed its muscles for the first time, banning two paintings – one attributed to Van Gogh, the other to Toulouse-Lautrec – from sale on suspicion of being fakes.

Prior to the sale of two record-breaking lots of Beswick at Bonhams’ October 28 sale – a colour trial Galloway Bull (£8800) and the Spirit of Whitfield (£9500) – the auction record for Beswick could well have been the £3500 paid for this rare figure at Potteries Specialist Auctions on October 22.

There were several toy sales in the Midlands in late October, including on October 25 a 500-lot sale conducted by Fieldings (12.5% buyer’s premium) in the oak-panelled Great Hall of Old Swinford Hospital School in Stourbridge.