News

PHILLIPS, de Pury & Luxembourg have raised and restructured their buyer’s premiums.

THE Internet may well be gathering momentum as an effective marketing and selling tool for Herefordshire auctioneers Brightwells who now illustrate about a quarter of the catalogue entries on their website launched in February.

SOME regular exhibitors have been standing at Cooper Antiques Fairs' premier autumn event, the Cheshire County Antiques Fair, for 14 years and not many have been doing it for less than five.

With the government still dithering over whether and when it should put a bill banning hunting with dogs in England to the vote in the House of Commons, it could hardly be a more ironic time for Sotheby's to be auctioning the only known portrait of the 'Father of Foxhunting' and the founder and first Master of the Quorn Hunt.

PARIS: The knock-on effects of auction reform mean it’s all change for the new season: France’s traditional auction scene has undergone a major overhaul, with commissaires-priseurs retaining their monopoly for court-order sales only, and obliged to create new commercial entities if they wish to stage other auctions.

WE are used to seeing one-piece, tabletsigned, Japanese ivories in good condition make anything from £800 up to several thousand pounds at auction. But somewhat more surprising, given the selective state of the general market, was the high selling rate of low-grade okimono, right, at the Clevedon Salerooms (15 per cent buyer’s premium) in Bristol on September 5.

ONE of the more unusual characters of the so-called ‘Golden Age’ of Danish art was Sally Henriques (1815-1886). Firstly, contrary to what the name might suggest, Sally was a man. Secondly he was Jewish. And thirdly he painted for just four years from 1841-45 before becoming – in a neat reversal of the career of Georges Braque – a house painter.