Review of Year 2022: Fairs in flux

Activities in the art and antiques market in 2022 were generally free from Covid restrictions - a welcome relief for everyone. Other challenges, however, quickly surfaced.

Rising costs have particularly affected fairs. Organisers are finding the increase in prices demanded by venues difficult or impossible to pass on to dealers who cannot not simply mark up all their goods and expect to make the same volume of sales from customers already hit by the cost of living crisis.

Well-known events such as IACF’s Alexandra Palace fair will not be held next year.

Announcing that The Chelsea Antiques & Fine Art Fair would not take place in March 2023 and that the firm was stepping down from organising events, 2Covet blamed “the uncertain climate and spiralling inflationary costs coupled with the understandable lack of commitment from exhibitors”.

Undaunted, others are planning to bring back their events for 2023 - typical of a sector that always finds a way no matter which obstacles are put in front of it.

Dealer trade association LAPADA intends to hold its flagship fair in London’s Berkeley Square in its usual autumn slot (the previous edition was in 2019) and The Open Art Fair, which took over the BADA fair, is set to return on April 19-23.

Both events will provide a welcome boost to the higher-end of the vetted fairs trade while exhibitors and visitors will also be glad to see no more date clashes. The November 2022 edition of the Chelsea fair was shelved partly due to a clash with the Winter Art & Antiques Fair Olympia whereas TEFAF Maastricht this year overlapped briefly with Masterpiece London.

Dealers and auction houses - already busy with extra due diligence from anti-money laundering obligations - have also been coming to terms with the imposition of the long-awaited near-total UK ivory trade ban as well as an increasing number of restitution issues.

Nevertheless, it has been a busy year for expansion and acquisition among auction houses. In June Cornette de Saint Cyr, with salerooms in Paris and Belgium, joined a Bonhams empire that had already swallowed US auction house Skinner, Swedish saleroom Bukowskis and Danish firm Bruun Rasmussen earlier in the year.

Regional firms have also been expanding with new salerooms and new hires to create new specialist departments.

All these moves convey a level of confidence that gives cause for optimism in the coming year. If the record-breaking $1.62bn sale of the Paul Allen collection at Christie’s last month is anything to go by, there is still plenty of top-end art market money around.

All we need now is some trickledown economics…

January

■ It is announced that internal trade of pre-1947 worked objects will be allowed to continue within the EU but is now subject to a certification process. The new rules, titled Revised Guidance on the EU Regime Governing Ivory Trade, comes into effect on January 19, a year after the EC published similar draft measures and invited responses.

■ Running from January 25-30, the Decorative Antiques and Textiles Fair in Battersea is the first of three stagings slated to take place at Evolution London this year. Following the fair’s return to in-person events in September 2021, it marks a return to normalcy after two calendar years of coronavirus and lockdown, which both involved just one of the three annual events.

This 18th century English creamware teapot and cover leads proceedings at a multi-estimate $10,000 (£7000) plus 23% buyer’s premium at the sale of the collection of doctors-turned-dealers Wynn A Sayman Antiques at Stair Galleries in Hudson, New York.

■ Auction house Bonhams buys Scandinavian firm Bukowskis. Bonhams itself was bought by private equity firm Epiris in 2018.

■ The leading UK auction firm in the calendar year of 2021 was Dreweatts, ATG reveals. Total hammer sales (without premium) at the Donnington Priory were £27.71m, a record for any regional saleroom. Equivalent sales for the firm, owned by art consultancy and valuation specialist Gurr Johns since a £1.25m deal in 2017, had been £14.6m in 2020. In a 12-month period when the traditional auction market was transformed by digitalisation, many of the leading regional fine art auction houses enjoyed record sales.

■ Fine art dealer Daniel Hunt launches an auction business - Sloane Street Auctions - opposite his former dealership in Sloane Street. Hunt has been a dealer for 35 years.

Silver Vaults dealer S&J Stodel buys a £26,000 Chinese silver trophy at saleroom Lawrences of Crewkerne (plus 25% buyer’s premium). The Celestial Cup, c.1850, marked for Khecheong of Canton, was shown at the Great Exhibition the year after it was the prize in a Hong Kong horse race.

■ The January series of Old Master auctions at Sotheby’s New York is led by a Sandro Botticelli (c.1445-1510) painting for the second year running. The Man of Sorrows with an estimate ‘in excess of $40m’. It was knocked down slightly below expectations at $39.3m (£29.3m) to a buyer on the phone. Before the auction, a third-party guarantee was arranged to ensure it would sell.

February

■ The UK government lays out a statutory instrument (a form of legislation) that sets out the provisions for the operation of exemptions under the Ivory Act. A new digital service launches allowing dealers, auctioneers and collectors to register and certify exempted ivory items they want to sell - with enforcement beginning in the spring.

■ The first auction is held at the new premises of Laidlaw Auctioneers and Valuers in Carlisle. Paul Laidlaw, who founded the firm in 2013, purchased the building prior to lockdown and its new facilities include a café and a museum on site. He says he is confident that room bidding is not a thing of the past.

■ Adrian Gilmour, owner of the Hungerford Antiques Arcade, acquires the Lamb Arcade in Wallingford. The Wallingford business has been an antiques centre since 1980 but the owners are retiring. Gilmour, who opened the Hungerford firm in 1972 - “one of the first antique centres to launch outside London” - plans to completely upgrade the premises when he takes over.

One of the earliest items of football memorabilia to appear at auction emerged at Bonhams in Knightsbridge and sold for £14,000 (plus 25% buyer’s premium): an England international goalkeeper shirt from 1879, worn by Rupert Darnley Anderson in a 2-1 win over Wales at The Oval in south London. The game was also the first international friendly between England and Wales according to FA rules, with the Welsh goal being their first ever.

■ It is announced that sport specialist auction house Graham Budd Auctions is under new ownership, with the founder becoming chairman. Former Sotheby’s director Budd established the sports memorabilia specialist 18 years ago and agreed a sale to a syndicate led by businessman Tim Murphy. Adam Gascoigne, who runs sports memorabilia conservators and framers Sportsframe, is now CEO.

■ Forum Auctions moves across the road from its existing premises to a dedicated saleroom. The new-build premises in Battersea, south London, gives the prints and works on paper specialist its own auction room. Previously it held all live auctions in a Mayfair hotel.

However, for some specific consignments it will hold auctions in the Gurr Johns- Dreweatts galleries at 16 Pall Mall in central London. Forum merged with the Gurr Johns group in 2021.

March

A rare Renaissance roundel goes on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art nearly 20 years after the Met’s first attempt at buying it. The c.1500 parcel-gilt and silvered bronze roundel, depicting Mars, Venus, Cupid and Vulcan, is attributed to Gian Marco Cavalli, goldsmith, sculptor, engraver and medallist who worked for the Gonzaga court in Mantua. The roundel sold at Christie’s in December 2003 for £6.95m (including buyer’s premium) and was owned by the buyer and their family until 2019 when it was sold to a UK dealer who then sold it on to the Met for £20.4m (including VAT).

■ LAPADA announces it has cancelled plans for the LAPADA Fair in Berkeley Square in the autumn due to a significant rise in costs.

■ Bonhams’ buying spree continues. Only two months after buying Bukowskis, it acquires US auction house Skinner and Danish saleroom Bruun Rasmussen. Skinner, based in Boston, Massachusetts, dates back to 1962. It will now be known as Bonhams Skinner.

■ The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) reveals that the Ivory Act 2018 will be enforced on June 6.

■ The British Art Fair is bought by Ramsay Fairs. Launched in 1988 by Gay Hutson and the late Bunny Wynn, the fair (previously known as the 20/21 British Art Fair) has been sold by brothers Robert and Johnny Sandelson to Ramsay.

Dealer and BBC Antiques Roadshow veteran Ian Harris auctions the majority of his stock as the company N Bloom & Son closes after more than a century. The sale at Stride & Son in Chichester features just over 200 pieces of Harris’ jewellery, including many signed pieces. Harris joined the firm in 1953 at age 16, taking over completely in 1971.

The British Art Fair will continue to run in the autumn in the Saatchi Gallery and to feature Modern and Contemporary British art, with Hutson staying on as fair director.

■ Auctionet, the online auction platform, buys Lawrences auction house in Somerset with the Crewkerne team remaining in place. The online firm was founded in 2011 and has partner auction houses across six countries. Lawrences continues to be run by chairman and managing director Helen Carless, with the current board of directors remaining in place.

April

■ A previously unrecorded family archive relating to Richard Grindall (1751-1820), an able seaman aboard Cook’s Second Voyage, surfaces for sale at Sloane Street Auctions with spectacular results. The 43 lots, many of them stored together in a box for more than a century, attract bidding from six museums. The sale total for the collection is close to £190,000.

■ Christie’s begins trialling moving art works by sea rather than air, with the aim of drastically reducing its carbon emissions. It estimates that the switch could reduce the environmental impact by 80%. Working with storage and logistics firm Crozier, the auction house trials transportation of artworks between London and New York, and between London and Hong Kong.

■ A world record auction price for an RAF Victoria Cross is set on April 27 at Spink. With an estimate of £350,000-450,000, the VC group of five awarded posthumously to Squadron Leader ASK ‘Pongo’ Scarf sells for £550,000 (£660,000 with premium).

■ Auction house Dix Noonan Webb rebrands as Noonans from the end of April.

May

■ Diego Maradona’s 1986 ‘hand of god’ World Cup shirt worn in the quarter-final against England sets a record for any piece of sporting memorabilia, selling for £6m at Sotheby’s.

Dreweatts sets a £1.2m house record with the sale of a Qianlong mark and period tianqiuping or ‘heavenly globe vase’ decorated in a striking palette of gold, silver and blue.

■ A 12-panel panorama of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, created in 1926 by wallpaper and fabrics firm Arthur Sanderson & Sons is sold by L&V Art and Design at The Decorative Antiques & Textiles Fair. The asking price was £18,250.

■ Auction houses will no longer be legally required to publicise guarantees on artworks sold in New York City following a repeal of business regulations in the state.

■ Chiswick Auctions announces it is ‘going home’ after nearly 25 years. The west London firm begins a move from Acton back to Barley Mow Passage, just off Chiswick High Road, as it plans to expand departments and staff.

■ Christie’s achieves the second-highest price ever for a picture when Andy Warhol’s Sage Marilyn is knocked down at $170m (£136m).

■ Edinburgh firm Georgian Antiques buys the brand of Whytock & Reid, one of the most famous names in Scottish cabinetmaking.

■ Christie’s no longer holds auctions of Asian art in the UK. The firm skips the May season and instead sources material for sale in Paris, New York and Hong Kong.

June

■ The Ivory Act, a near-total ban on the sale of antique ivory, comes into force in the UK. The act includes only a few narrow exemptions and a registration system.

■ An extra layer of Brexit bureaucracy due this month is shelved. The new controls - import declarations for goods arriving from the EU - are delayed until the end of 2023.

As the Platinum Jubilee celebrations begin, this Garrard & Co diamond and platinum brooch given by Queen Elizabeth II to the Duchess of Norfolk for assistance prior to her coronation in 1953 is sold for £180,000 by Mayfair auction house Noonans.

■ The Gallery Climate Coalition (GCC), a notfor- profit group of galleries, auction houses and advisers, announces its Sustainable Shipping Campaign.

■ Moretti Fine Art opens an enlarged gallery in the heart of St James’s after a complete renovation of its 12-13 Duke Street premises. The site has housed art dealers since 1910.

■ The live and online-only auctions of the collection of fashion designer Hubert de Givenchy (1927-2018) bring a hammer total of €96.9m (£83.1m) at Christie’s Paris.

■ Christie’s New York conducts two sales dispersing works from the magnificent private library of a legendary antiquarian book dealer and collector, the late William S Reese (1955-2018).

The contents of a Camberwell museum devoted to Victorian poets Robert Browning (1812-89) and Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806- 61) sell for £100,000 at Essex firm Stacey’s. This bust of Browning by his son ‘Pen’ dated 1886 is sold to the Armstrong Browning Library in Waco, Texas, for £17,000.

■ Bonhams buys its fourth auction house this year as Cornette de Saint Cyr, with salerooms in Paris and Belgium, joins the brand. Coins and medal specialist Glendining’s effectively closes as Bonhams shuts its coin and medal department.

■ The rescheduled TEFAF Maastricht fair opens, overlapping with BRAFA in Brussels and Masterpiece London. In a blow for the European fair, four armed thieves target a display case on the stand of London’s Symbolic & Chase and jewellery is stolen.

■ Rail strikes and high temperatures blight the opening days of the Olympia summer fair that is staged for the first time since 2019. A strong turn-out and good sales greet the return of Masterpiece London.

July

■ London art dealer Danny Katz loans a John Constable (1776-1837) painting which he bought at Sotheby’s last year to Brighton’s Royal Pavilion. Katz, a former resident of the city, bought the view of labourers and fishermen on Brighton & Hove’s beaches at Sotheby’s Old Master evening sale in December 2021, where it sold at £813,600 including premium. Titled Colliers unloading on Hove Beach, looking towards Shoreham, Brighton, the painting is on public display for the first time.

The British Antique Dealers’ Association (BADA) appoints Ashley Gallant as managing director. Gallant was previously at Asian art dealership Sydney L Moss where she spent eight years, most recently as business development manager and financial controller. Prior to her role at Sydney L Moss, she worked with art dealer Richard Green and in the valuations department at Sotheby’s.

■ US museum curators and collectors are among the buyers at London Art Week (LAW) during the summer. Dealers reported visits from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Cleveland Art Museum, The Museum of Fine Arts Houston, Princeton University Art Museum, J Paul Getty Museum, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, Harvard Museums, and the Hispanic Society of America. Running from July 3-8, the theme is around Music & Dance.

■ Consignments are thin on the ground judging by the summer Old Master auctions series in London. While some sectors of the art market experience a glut of supply, as items held back during the pandemic finally come forth, the reverse seems to happen for Old Masters.

August

■ The sale of Scottish Works of Art & Whisky at Lyon & Turnbull in Edinburgh includes a remarkable mid-18th century Jacobite goblet. The 7½in (19cm) glass carries commonly recognised Jacobite symbols but the mottos are previously unrecorded. Estimated at £3000-5000, it takes £8000 (plus 26% buyer’s premium).

■ Russian art specialist auction house MacDougall’s announces the firm’s cofounder and owner William MacDougall has died aged 67 of a heart attack in Moscow.

■ A lot offering Action Man outfits and accessories from the flock hair period c.1970 sells for 100 times the low estimate at a Devon saleroom thanks to a considerable rarity it contained. The Judo Set number 34805 is a ‘Holy Grail’ for collectors of the British toy range, and a boxed version with Judogi suit and trousers, grading belts and booklet was the reason for the £5000 result via thesaleroom.com at Auction Antiques (25% buyer’s premium) on August 25, way above a £50-80 estimate.

September

■ Twenty-seven looted artefacts seized from New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art are returned to Italy and Egypt as part of long-running investigations by the Manhattan District Attorney’s Antiquities Trafficking Unit. The objects had previously been sold by a number of antiquities dealers and auction houses.

■ A man who, along with his father, stole valuable Chinese jades from an elderly Bedfordshire widow is ordered by Luton Crown Court to pay back more than £200,000 to the victim. Gary Pickersgill, 43, who was already serving an eight-year sentence, is told he faces another 30 months if the money is not paid within six months. Many of the items had already been sold at auction.

This Fulham Pottery Crown and Lion vase designed by Constance Spry and Oliver Messel in recognition of the 1953 Coronation is offered at Roseberys in south London. Estimated at £2000-2500, it takes £10,000 (£13,000 including buyer’s premium) - a record for a Spry vase.

■ Bonhams relaunches its oak and vernacular furniture sales - this time in Edinburgh - with the first of the annual events (which also include and folk art) held on September 27.

■ A little-known theatrical portrait depicting the comic actor Edward Townsend painted by Johan Zoffany (1733-1810) towards the end of his career makes a treble-estimate £330,000 at Duke’s of Dorchester on September 29. It was later offered by Moretti Fine Art at its London Art Week exhibition.

One of only five civilian Victoria Crosses ever awarded sells for an auction record of £750,000 at London saleroom Noonans. It had been awarded to Irishman Thomas Henry Kavanagh for his role in the Indian Mutiny ‘Siege of Lucknow’.

■ Lay’s Auctioneers (previously known as David Lay) expands with a second saleroom in its home county. The Penzance firm opens The Lanner Auction House in a former Methodist church in the village of Lanner, near Redruth in west Cornwall, with its first sale held there on September 29.

October

■ Christie’s sells LS Lowry’s Going to the Match for a record £6.6m. The winning bid is placed by Julia Fawcett, chief executive of The Lowry in Salford, sitting in the front row of the saleroom.

■ Dealer portal 2Covet announces that it will no longer run fairs. It previously ran The Chelsea Antiques & Fine Art Fair.

Tall bottle vase with disc’, a monumental piece by the German-born British ceramicist Hans Coper, sets an auction record for studio pottery when it takes £520,000 (estimate £80,000-120,000) at Bonhams’ Design sale in London.

■ Bennie Gray, owner of Grays antiques centre on Davies Street, celebrates the long-awaited opening of the new Bond Street station in Mayfair after a nearly a decade of disruption during the construction project.

■ A George III mahogany china cabinet becomes one of the most expensive pieces of English furniture ever sold when it takes $2.2m (£2m) at the sale of the Ann and Gordon Getty collection at Christie’s in New York.

■ The Open Art Fair, part owned by the British Antique Dealers’ Association (BADA), announces that it will return in spring 2023 at a purpose-built marquee in Duke of York Square, Chelsea. The first Open Art Fair opened on the cusp of the first lockdown in 2020 and was closed after just two days. It has not taken place since.

A Chinese blue and white vase with a Qianlong mark shoots past its four-figure estimate to sell for €7.7m (£6.2m) at Osenat’s auction in France.

■ Sotheby’s Paris sells the contents from the Hôtel Lambert, a 17th century Parisian Hôtel Particulier on the Ile de Law Cité. The furniture, paintings and works of art that were housed in the 61 rooms are offered in a series of five live auctions and one online sale. The house was built in the early 1640s for the financier Jean-Baptiste Lambert. In 2007 it was acquired by Sheikh Hamad bin Abdullah Al Thani and his immediate family, who restored and furnished it.

November

■ Setting an all-time high for a single-owner offering, the auction of Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen’s collection at Christie’s raises an extraordinary premium-inclusive $1.62bn (£1.42bn) in New York.

La Montagne Sainte-Victoire by Paul Cézanne takes $120m (£105.3m) at the Paul Allen sale held by Christie’s.

■ The only known poster promoting a concert featuring Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and The Big Bopper on the day all three died in a plane crash (February 3, 1959) sells at Heritage Auctions of Dallas for a premium-inclusive $447,000 - a record for any concert poster.

■ Dealer association LAPADA announces its fair will return to London’s Berkeley Square in 2023. Its most recent edition was in 2019.

■ Arthur Swallow Fairs announces a new three-day decorative home and salvage fair, launching next year. It will run from Friday to Sunday, June 9-11, in a privately owned estate and park in the Cotswolds.

■ A four-day auction of entertainment props and memorabilia held by PropStore of Rickmansworth raises a hammer total just shy of £10m.

■ Auction house Chorley’s changes hands, with director Thomas Jenner-Fust buying the business with former colleague and friend Werner Freundel. Previous owner Simon Chorley remains with the business in a parttime role.

■ A rediscovered album of 19 cartes de visite portrait photographs documenting Charles Darwin’s changing visage over three decades sells for £126,000 at Reeman Dansie.

■ A record for Beswick pottery is set when a shire horse model 818 sells for £11,300 hammer at Potteries Auctions.

December

■ Rising costs force IACF to announce it will no longer hold its annual antiques and collectors’ fairs at Alexandra Palace, the most recent edition having taken place in September. The group simultaneously announces the launch of a one-day Monday antiques fair at the Hertfordshire Showground in Redbourn. It previously held fairs at this location in 2011-12.

Selbstbildnis Gelb-Rosa (Self-Portrait in Yellow and Pink) by Max Beckmann sets a record for any artwork sold at a German auction when it is knocked down for €20m (£17.1m). With buyer’s premium added, the price at Berlin saleroom Grisebach is €23.2m (£19.8m).

■ Australia’s answer to the Guggenheim and the Tate Modern opens to the public. The Aus$344m (£190m) transformation of the Art Gallery of New South Wales is regarded as Sydney’s greatest cultural asset since the unveiling of its iconic Opera House in 1973.

■ Just Stop Oil climate activists threaten to start slashing paintings at museums (rather than throwing soup over works protected by glass) as they model their protests on the suffragist movement.

■ TEFAF, The European Fine Art Foundation which owns and organises two of the world’s largest art fairs in Maastricht and New York, appoints Bart Drenth in the newly created role of global managing director. He becomes the organisation’s fourth leader in three years.

The only known photograph of Marilyn Monroe inscribed to Joe DiMaggio sells for a premium-inclusive $300,000 (£245,000) at Heritage in Dallas, setting an auction record for a signed Monroe photograph. The picture, a publicity still taken in 1953 for Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, was already among the most famous and coveted of Monroe’s portraits.

■ Dreweatts and Forum Auctions announce they will hold their first joint sale this month and are combining some of their departments.