News

REGARDED by the professionals as the place to spot trends, New York’s double weekend Triple Pier Antiques Show, on November 8 and 9 and then November 15 and 16, pulled in its best crowds since the 1990s and private buying proved very strong.

Amazon are to compete for a share of the thriving online trade in antiquarian and secondhand books, having acquired rights to use the British Library’s bibliographic catalogue as a searchable database.

With Sotheby’s £6.7m Russian Pictures sale notching a hatful of records four days earlier, it was hardly a surprise to see some unfamiliar leather jacket-wearing, mobile phone-wielding characters turning up at Gorringes’ (15% buyer’s premium) November 21-23 sale at Lewes to view four paintings from the estate of a Knightsbridge-based lady who had once dealt in Russian objects.

Private consignments of Chinese porcelain are increasingly difficult to source and competition is rife between provincial and London rooms. Prices regularly spiral for the best quality works whether they are offered in the provinces or in the capital.

SINCE the Second World War, Switzerland has been the world’s premier marketplace for antiquities, so it is no surprise that it is this discipline which not only dominates but defines Cultura, the international Swiss fair in Basel which ran at the city’s exhibition halls from November 14 to 19.

West End public relations firm Focus PR have been appointed to head up communications services for next summer’s Fine Art and Antiques Fair at Olympia.

SILVER, VERTU AND RUSSIAN WORKS OF ART £1 = $1.67: Christie’s (19.5/12% buyer’s premium) New York silver department has reasons to be cheerful: their October 21 sale, which saw selling rates of 78 per cent by lot and 82 by value for a premium-inclusive total of $5.95m (£3.56m) was boosted further when New York dealers Shrubsole bought the magnificent Charles II silver-gilt toilet service once in the collection of J.P. Morgan for a low-estimate $450,000 (£269,460) after the sale.