News

NEARLY 1300 lots were offered by Anthemion Auctions of Cardiff in an April 21 sale of sports memorabilia and among the soccer programmes, there was a bit of a shock when a 1945 programme for a Newport County v Chelsea match, valued at £30-40, was bid to £2600!

VAST, and certainly imposing, it will be impossible to miss the centrepiece of a selling exhibition The Cabinet & Other Notables which will be held at The Country Seat, near Henley-on-Thames in Oxfordshire from May 21 to June 11.

THIS Sunday May 16 will see, for the third time, Vintage Mayfair Frozen in Fashion being held in the Music Room of Grays Antique Market at 26 South Molton Lane, London W1, just two minutes from Bond Street tube station.

THIS Sunday May 16, the second London Photograph Fair of the year will take place in Bloomsbury at the Bonnington Hotel in Southampton Row.

THIS spring season Spink’s have had some hard-hitting sales and it has to be said that the market for the best British material has become very buoyant over the last year or so.

One of the more dramatic results seen at Sotheby’s (20/12% buyer's premium) English Country House sale on April 7 in New York was the $130,000 (£70,650) paid by a private collector for this English needlework portrait of Queen Elizabeth I, c.1580, 4 3/4 x 4 1/2in (12 x 11.4cm), which had been estimated at a modest $8000-12,000.

THE Bonhams empire has embraced the notion of niche markets in pragmatic fashion, each of the various outposts having its own speciality – while the Scottish branch, which sells across the range of the market, breaks its sales into single specialist offerings. On March 18 Bonhams Edinburgh (17.5/10% buyer’s premium) offered 375 pieces of jewellery and silver with the following day’s sale comprising 198 items of Asian art, ceramics and glass.