Dealers

KENSINGTON Church Street will be a worthwhile call for those interested in brushing up their ceramics scholarship over the next week or so, with two specialist dealers holding non-selling exhibitions aimed at furthering our knowledge.

ANTIQUE folk art specialist Robert Young’s distinctive stock has found favour both here and in America, very often at fairs, but from May 14 to 22 you can see some choice pieces displayed on his home patch at the fifth annual exhibition at his showrooms at 68 Battersea Bridge Road, London SW11.

STILL on the bargain front, Hampshire dealers Millers Antiques will slash 20 per cent off all stock to be offered at their annual Open Weekend Exhibition to be held from May 7 to 10 at their extensive premises at Netherbrook House, 86 Christchurch Road, Ringwood.

AS part of their 25th anniversary celebrations, The Cotswolds Antique Dealers Association are holding a selling exhibition from May 21 to 23 at the restored tithe barn in the gardens of Bourton House, Bourton-on-the-Hill, Gloucestershire.

ST JAMES'S specialists in Asian art Jonathan Tucker and Antonia Tozer are among the many exhibitors who enjoyed success at the recent International Asian Art Fair in New York where they sold some fine early monumental pieces of sculpture.

FOR more than 20 years Hallidays have been holding selling exhibitions at their picturesque Oxfordshire showrooms at The Old College, Dorchester-on-Thames. Over the years to broaden the appeal they have invited guest specialist dealers to participate in the shows.

DEALERS at the Saffron Walden Antiques Centre have offered a reward of up to £10,000 for information leading to the return of their stock and the capture of the burglars who stole it.

THE British Antiques and Collectables Awards are going ahead this year, but not quite in the usual format.

THE importance of exercising due diligence has been driven home in the most painful way for a dealer, whose oversight has cost them £12,000.

THE international Asian art community descended upon New York in March to secure the most enticing exhibits in Manhattan’s two major Asian art fairs and numerous dealers’ shows. They were also there to contest the best quality Chinese, Japanese, Indian and Southeast Asian fare in Sotheby’s and Christie’s five specialist auctions that took place between March 23 and 25.

LONDON’S art world leaders have come up with an initiative for extending the peak selling period that is London in June.

THE Royal Museum & Art Gallery of Canterbury have acquired a van Dyck portrait of one of the city’s most famous sons from one of London’s leading Old Master picture dealers.

WHATEVER the state of the antique silver market, West Sussex specialist Nicholas Shaw is constantly busy engendering business.

WELL-KNOWN exhibitors at a number of fairs, the Northamptonshire restoration and retail business Aspidistra Antiques are planning to sell their shop in the small country town of Finedon, near Wellingborough, and move to France.

MOVING shop when leases expire, or for other reasons, is always stressful, but some moves are less traumatic than others.

ANTIQUES shops come and go (and plenty have gone in recent years) but some seem to trade on forever. It is 100 years since this little girl was photographed outside the bookshop at 7-8 Union Street, Brighton, right, where Dermot and Jill Palmer are now preparing to mark their 35th anniversary dealing in antiques from the premises.

DANIELLA Luxembourg has launched her own private art dealership, Luxembourg Art, after selling her stake in auction house Phillips, de Pury and Luxembourg to partner Simon de Pury.

POLICE are warning that a thief, fitting the description of a woman who stole from London antiques shops in January, has struck again.

FOUNDED in 1876, The Fine Art Society at 148 New Bond Street is one of London’s oldest and most innovative galleries and it has chosen a fascinating theme for its next exhibition, which opens on March 23 when the gallery gets back to business after two months renovation.

PROMOTION is the strong point of Richard Gardner, chairman of the Petworth Art and Antique Dealers’ Association, and he tells me the association is holding a Treasure Hunt on April 24. The prize actually is well worth winning, a nice antique silver-gilt caster.