Coin-mounted tankard and box, offered for £18,500 by The Old Corkscrew at the LAPADA Berkeley Square Fair.
Floorplan reveals fair stand demand
LAPADA has released a floorplan of its September flagship fair revealing that only around 12 of its 84 stands remain available.
The event returns from September 27-October 1 and many remaining stands are also now under offer or optioned.
The exhibitor list includes Butchoff, Lennox Cato, Wick Antiques and Karen Taylor.
Also showing is The Old Corkscrew of Franschhoek, South Africa, which has provided one of the first highlights for the event: a coin mounted tankard and box made using coins discovered as part of a treasure trove in 1896.
The trove comprised around 19lb of silver coins stored above the vestry of Crediton Church in Devonshire in 1685.
In 1896, workmen disrupted the bag when they broke through the ceiling and the coins showered down. An inquest was held to determine whether the hoard could be considered treasure, and the dealership has copies of portions of the inquest.
The story is inscribed to the base of the tankard, which is offered with the box for £18,500.
Finally, the fair has announced that Royal Mint and The Wallace Collection are sponsoring the event along with the hotel Jumeirah Carlton Tower, handmade wallpaper company Fromental, and investment firm Investec.
New York auction will give you Wings
View of items in situ at the Anne and Gordon Getty Temple of Wings home in California.
Image: Lisa Romerein/OTTO/ Christie’s
A second tranche of the Ann and Gordon Getty collection is coming to Christie’s in June. Following the October 2022 sales, this auction series features items from the couple’s Berkeley, California, home called Temple of Wings.
A live sale on June 14 in New York followed by two online sales ending on June 15 will include late 19th and early 20th century decorative arts from Gothic Revival and Arts & Crafts items to Victorian paintings.
Proceeds will go to charity.
Christie’s 2022 sales series of 1500 lots from the collection took more than $150m (including premium).
Men jailed after coin hoard probe
In the latest of a series of court cases, two men have been found guilty of trying to sell rare Anglo-Saxon coins.
The two men, who were first arrested in May 2019 following an undercover pol ice operation, were sentenced on May 4 for five years and two months each for offences of conspiracy to sell criminal property and possession of criminal property.
Craig Best, 46, of South View, Bishop Auckland, and Roger Pilling, 74, of Loveclough, Lancashire, had denied conspiring to sell criminal property at Durham Crown Court.
The Durham case is one part of two separate investigations in relation to a treasure hoard worth more than £3m which had been discovered near Eye in Herefordshire.
The first was led by West Mercia Police and was followed by this separate investigation by Durham Constabulary.
The Herefordshire Hoard comprised 300 coins found by two different metal detectorists in 2015. In 2019 the two men who had found the hoard using metal detectors were sentenced to 18 years for not declaring them under the Treasure Act.
Just 29 coins were recovered in this case and a further 44 in the Durham investigation.
The hoard contained a mixture of ornaments, bullion and coins, typical of Viking hoards of the 9th and 10th centuries in Britain.
Under the Treasure Act, f inders of items deemed treasure (including rare and precious archaeological finds more than 300 years old) must notify the relevant authorities within 14 days.
Raza realises six figures in London
Bindu by Syed Haider Raza, sold for £240,000 at Roseberys.
A large acrylic on canvas by Indian artist Syed Haider Raza (1922-2016) drew strong interest at Roseberys’ auction on April 28, surpassing a £50,000-70,000 estimate and selling at £240,000 (plus 25% buyer’s premium) to a private collector.
Measuring 3ft 11in (1.2m) square, it dated from 1995 and was one of the artist’s Bindu pictures – a key part of his oeuvre often featuring black orbs signifying rebirth or the seed of creation.
Crucially, it had a good provenance, having originally been acquired by the Canadian investor Peter Cundhill and subsequently donated to the Chelsea and Westminster NHS Trust. It was sold at Roseberys on the trust’s behalf.
The south London auction house reported interest from the UK, Middle East and India, and the price fetched was the highest at a UK auction for a Bindu picture.
The highest price for any work by Raza in the UK remains the £2.1m for Saurashtra at Christie’s in 2010.
Most read
The most clicked-on stories for week April 27-May 3 on antiquestradegazette.com
1 Roman bust found in Texas charity shop to return to Germany after more than 70 years
2 Men found guilty of selling Anglo-Saxon coins from Herefordshire Hoard
3 Crowning glory: George II coronation relic rings a bell
4 A £65,000 price reflects considerable appeal of stumpwork mirror frame
5 Superstar Freddie Mercury’s private collection to be sold at Sotheby’s this autumn
In Numbers
€8
The price paid at a Spanish car boot sale by a couple from Staffordshire for a pair of c.1900 Art Nouveau Loetz vases. Folllowing a valuation at Burton Market Hall, the Loetz Phänomen iridescent glass vases were offered at the Richard Winterton sale on May 2 with an estimate of £800-1200 and sold at £1200.
Pair of c.1900 Art Nouveau Loetz Phänomen iridescent glass vases sold at Richard Winterton for £1200.
