News

MARCH is a busy fairs month for many organisers, but none more so than Cooper Antiques Fairs who hold three events, starting this weekend with their long-established fair at Arley Hall, near Knutsford in Cheshire, from March 11 to 13.

by Ian McKayLAST summer, when a large Biggles collection was put up for sale in Swindon, results were a little disappointing – at least for some of those titles offered individually, where some reserves proved too strong for collectors and trade alike – and around half of the 100 lots were bought in – but W.E. Johns’ famous creation certainly does not lack admirers and in a Bloomsbury Auctions sale of February, a much smaller group of Biggles books, mostly from one source, brought good prices.

A SURVEY has unveiled the hostility of antique dealers to the London Assembly’s bid to extend the congestion charge to Kensington and Chelsea.

FAMOUS West End department store Heal’s is the sponsor of the V&A’s major spring exhibition, International Arts and Crafts, which will be held at the museum in South Kensington from March 17 to 24.

NEWS too, of confident moves in the fine art trade. After a career in the London art world spanning some 45 years, Martin Summers has, just after his 66th birthday, set up his own gallery and dealership, Martin Summers Fine Art Ltd, at 54 Glebe Place in Chelsea.

THE memory of a long-ago, short-lived trade agreement between England and France was rekindled by an extraordinary embroidered waistcoat that surfaced in the Deburaux & Associés sale in Paris on February 11, when it sold to the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich for €5000 (£3470) plus 20.33% buyer’s premium.

If a silhouette was going to set a new auction record then this elaborately embellished, highly decorative and grandiose royal subject was surely a good candidate. When it sold for £9500 (plus 20 per cent premium) at Bonhams on February 22, it beat the auctioneers’ own previous auction high of £8000 set last year by a Torond conversation piece.