London

UK: EARLS Court and Olympia Group chief executive Andrew Morris, one of the Morris family who bought the exhibition complex from P&O, is the new managing director of Clarion Events, the group’s event organising company.

ACADEMY Auctioneers, London, have vowed to fulfil their commitments to existing clients, despite disputes over the sale of the company.

The combined hammer prices for pre-war B-movie advertising posters at auction houses these days can easily exceed the budgets allocated by the old Hollywood studios to such downmarket films.

The William Foyle Library Pt. II sale at Christie’s, London last week revealed a copy of one of the rarest of all blockbooks.

UK: The market for 20th century collectable ceramics can be a fickle beast – as quick to react to fashion as a high street shirt – so one should not necessarily be surprised to learn that, for once, Christie’s South Kensington (17.5 per cent buyer’s premium) found the temperature variable when they dipped their toes into these waters on August 25, 2000.

UK: CONFUSION has arisen over the future of Academy Auctions of Ealing after conflicting reports that it may or may not be closing.

One of a pair of giltwood fauteuils by Jacob-Desmalter for which Ferneyhough, a London dealer, will ask £120,000 at the Chelsea Fair London, September 15-24.

UK: BLOOMSBURY Book Auctions, London has been sold to Stocklight Limited, owners of Bernard J. Shapero Rare Books and the Shapero Gallery.

UK: A SMALL group of scientific apparatus featured in Phillips’ July 18 horological auction in Bond Street, London and comprised a silver pocket chronometer by Webster and Son of London, hallmarked for 1834, and a 19th century five-inch theodolite signed for Reiss Leibenwerda, each with their custom-made cases.

LONDON: Bermondsey’s The Old Cinema antiques warehouse is to move out of the area after the building it occupies has been sold for redevelopment.

OLYMPIA have made dateline changes at their flagship antiques event in London, the June Fine Art and Antiques Fair, and they will apply to both the gallery and the ground floor.

THE golfers who tee-off at St Andrew’s on Thursday might stand a better chance of winning the Open if they forced Tiger Woods to play with this locally made ball, rather than the standard ultra-scientific balata.

THE second week of London’s prestige midsummer sales saw the Modern given way to the traditional with a flurry of exceptional prices for Old Master paintings and drawings and Renaissance works of art.

THOUGH it might no longer be the place where an international vendor would choose to sell a £20m Picasso or Van Gogh, London last week enhanced its reputation as a revenue for selling major-name Impressionist, Modern and Contemporary art with a string of major results at Sotheby’s and Christie’s evening sales.

UK: THE Internet has failed to generate any significant volume of sales for London’s art dealers in the past year, reports the members’ survey for 1999/2000 by the Society of London Art Dealers.

UK: LEADING the auction at £100,000 (plus premium) was this 27in (68.5cm) high early 18th century, two-section Saxon covered goblet from Dresden which is applied with 12 silver-gilt oval medallions of Roman emperors and was discovered in a cellar at Schloss Hinnenburg, in northern Germany.

THE Booker, the Baftas, the Brits, and now the Baca; the inaugural British Antiques and Collectables Awards finally joined the ranks of other UK arts prize-giving bashes with applause and aplomb at Grosvenor House on June 20.

UK: WHAT difference does provenance actually make to the price of an antique? The answer is apparently none at all in the case of the shortest lived and least productive factory in the history of English porcelain.

UK: AGNEW’S have strengthened their commitment to contemporary art with the appointment of Mark Adams as director in charge of the contemporary department.

UK: PRICE GUIDE publishers Miller’s have issued a shortlist of contenders for the British Antiques and Collectables Awards, a new scheme which is being run for the first time this year, in association with the BBC Homes & Antiques Magazine.