News

NEW Money Laundering Regulations, affecting dealers and auctioneers, are due to be published in the middle of June with the new code enforceable after a grace period of three months.

Downturn in trade blamed: The Bond Street Silver Galleries, a fixture on London’s finest antiques thoroughfare for 40 years, is to close in the autumn. The downturn in the trade for table and decorative antique silver is behind the imminent closure of the 18 strongrooms, more than half of which have been vacated in the last six months.

Pictured on the front cover of the 530-lot catalogue offered by Suffolk auctioneers Abbotts (10 per cent buyer’s premium) on March 12 was a group of Moorcroft pottery assembled by a Southwold collector over the past 25 years.

THE name of Namikawa Yasuyuki is justly positioned in the premier league of Meiji metalworkers as one of the very finest cloisonné workshops working in the late 19th/early 20th century.

ONE of the highlights of Bonhams & Langlois' (15% buyer's premium) March 26 Channel Islands theme sale was a collection of uniforms and associated ephemera and family history relating to three senior members of the Jersey Militia.

MID APRIL saw only the second sale held by Bamfords, the Derbyshire auctions firm (15% buyer's premium), but elated auctioneer James Lewis, talking from his mobile whilst filming a new episode of BBC TV’s Flog It!, felt it to be the best he had seen in Derby in at least five years.

THE bi-annual West Country Sporting Sales have acquired a character of their own since their inception six sales ago, finding a niche in what has become a crowded field by focusing upon hunting antiques in addition to the traditional summer sports.