News

Consigned to Sworders by a dealer who had bought it when clearing a London office, this George III patent extending mahogany dining table created a massive amount of interest when offered by the Stansted Mountfitchet auctioneers on September 9. “When it arrived it was so obviously a good thing,” said specialist Guy Schooling who found two potential candidates for the maker, S. Martin, whose name and the inscription Invenit et Fecit appeared on a brass plaque applied to the base.

COMING in well over estimate, the auctioneers team trounced their dealer opponents with a 6-1 scoreline in the first annual Dealers v Auctioneers football match.

Laure de Beauvau-Craon has announced that she will step down as chief executive of Sotheby’s France at the end of the year. She has held the post since 1991 and will be remembered for successfully lobbying the European Commission to bring about the abolition of the domestic auction monopoly of France’s commissaires-priseurs.

With the retirement at the end of this month of the Alnwick auctioneer Ian Robertson, Newcastle-upon-Tyne auctioneers Anderson & Garland are to assume control of the 40-year-old business.

International Fine Art Expositions are to repackage its portfolio of Palm Beach art and antiques fairs as the events move to a new venue for 2004. In an effort to distinguish the top-tier fairs from the proliferation of ‘tailgate’ events in southern Florida – and allowing IFAE’s vice-president Lorenzo Rudolf to place his own stamp on the fairs pioneered by David Lester – the three events held this year in a marquee will become two next year at the Palm Beach County Convention Center.

TURNOVER and the number of fine art items offered at auction globally have fallen dramatically this year, according to two of the leading market trackers. The British-based Art Sales Index, who record hammer prices of pictures over £250/$400, sculpture and miniatures over £1000/$2000 and photographs and prints over £2000/$3000, have noted an 11.5 per cent drop in the number of lots offered from the 2001/2002 season to that of 2002/2003.

North Yorkshire auctioneers Tennants, who bought the Heathcote Ball name earlier this year, are to open a consignment office in Leicester this month but have no plans to hold auctions in the Midlands.