News

BONHAMS have promoted Jon Baddeley, their head of collectors’ sales worldwide, to be managing director of their Knightsbridge operation in London with immediate effect. A new head is also expected to be appointed for the Bond Street operation.

THE antiques trade in Portobello Road has suffered another blow, with the demise of The Good Fairy market now confirmed. Added to what has gone before, it calls into question Kensington and Chelsea Council’s entire vision for the borough as set out in its Core Strategy, currently being reviewed by the Planning Inspectorate, which talks time and again about how Portobello should be protected as a Special District Centre.

AT 11 1/2 stone and 4ft 3in (1.3m) wide, it is big enough to bathe in. Baron Raby’s wine cistern was ordered from the workshops of goldsmith Philip Rollos in 1705 as part of his ambassadorial plate in his capacity as Ambassador Extraordinary to the King of Prussia in Berlin.

A SERIES of guidelines designed to encourage standard and proper practice in the fine art auction industry in China were unveiled on June 31. They are the first measures of their type since sales by auction were permitted to resume in the People’s Republic 23 years ago.

HAD it not been for the headline-grabbing and record-breaking J.M.W. Turner (1775-1851), the latest Old Master auctions in London would have seemed a bit flat.

THE Lyon & Turnbull sale at Edinburgh got off to a splendid start when Lot 1, a Worcester porcelain plate from the Duke of Gloucester service, c.1770, sold at £12,000.

EXTENDING the Artist’s Resale Right (ARR) to the estates of dead artists after 2012 poses a serious threat to the 60,000 jobs the UK art industry supports. That is the view of the view of the British Art Market Federation (BAMF), which is calling on Brussels to delay the move and allow all member states to adopt the derogation until ARR is accepted globally.