News

LONDON specialists Dix Noonan Webb (15% buyer’s premium) had their best ever sale of Orders, Decorations and Medals on April 2. Their press releases make things easy for your poor ink slinger. They give all sorts of details offering a view of the actual state of the market – hard facts, not speculative interpretation.

MURMURS around the trade indicate that business at fairs is easier out of London than in the capital, which bodes well for one of our top provincial events, The Harrogate Antique and Fine Art Fair held from May 1 to 5 at the Harrogate International Centre, bang in the centre of town.

Dismissed by some as the equivalent of Clarice Cliff, the brilliantly coloured, Vorticist-influenced linocuts produced by the Grosvenor School during the inter-war years continue to be the most hotly contested commodity at UK print auctions, particularly when they emerge from long-established private collections.

AMONG all the specialist collecting areas, few can be as specialised or as fervent as the market in items relating to the Titanic. Devizes auctioneers Henry Aldridge & Son (15/10% buyer’s premium) have capitalised on the way enthusiasts will pay big money for anything relating to the doomed liner by holding two specialist sales a year, in April and in September.

ALMOST all the exhibitors at the giant Antiques For Everyone fair, held at Birmingham’s National Exhibition Centre from April 3 to 6, arrived with far from high hopes. This was just as well for a good many of them, but not for all.

Topping the sale of fine watches held at Bonhams’ Bond Street (19.5/10% buyer’s premium) rooms on April 15, was this 18th century gold pair cased verge watch. This had a signed and numbered movement (562) by Daniel Delander, who was free of the Clockmakers Company in 1699, and was contained in plain gold cases marked for London, 1716.

FOUNDED in 1990 by Devonshire-based Madeline Marchand, who operates as Fair Antiques, the next twice-yearly East Berkshire Antiques Fair will be held at the Berkshire College of Agriculture, near Maidenhead, over the Bank Holiday weekend of May 3 to 5.