News

NOTTINGHAM-based organiser of specialist Deco fairs Nick Cox, who trades as Abbey Fairs, has increased his stable to five since last December and he launches a new event at Kelham Hall, a gothic manor house near Newark, next year.

OVER 50 autograph letters and postcards addressed by Siegfried Sassoon to Professor Vivian de Sola Pinto are to be sold by Mill House Auctions of Helston on November 4, together with signed and inscribed copies of Sassoon’s books from de Sola Pinto’s library.

A FORMER teacher has won a £6750 Queen Elizabeth Scholarship to enable him to take a unique antique clock restoration course. Brian Coles, aged 53, pictured right, taught geography and geology for 22 years, latterly at a large South Wales comprehensive school, where he was also head of year.

The seasonal nature of the international Asian art market means buyers risk being swamped by the sheer volume of Asian art auctioned in a concentrated period. So it was the sale timing as much as the market freshness of a 103-lot private English collection of Asian works of art from a deceased estate that contributed to the success of Christie’s South Kensington’s (17.5/10% buyer’s premium) 465-lot outing on October 4.

THE Newcastle upon Tyne auctioneers Anderson & Garland are to relocate their second-string saleroom to a new purpose-built building at Westerhope. The firm took over Pattisons Rooms at Crawcrook near Gateshead in 1983 where for 20 years they have held their fortnightly sales of Victorian and later furniture and effects supporting the quarterly sales held at Marlborough House in the city centre.

Walking may be an unfashionably slow mode of transport in today’s time-pressured world, but lengthy periods spent on foot in past centuries were made more pleasurable by a vast array of walking aids. This material is now seriously collected and a cluster of cane collections have appeared on the market of late.

THE growing strength of the Modern British market has had plenty of publicity over the last couple of years, but strong demand for Post-War painting is hardly news to the Scottish and Irish collectors who have been faithfully backing the “Modern Celtic” market for decades.