US

The fair with the best chance of giving New York and the trade a much-needed lift: I REMEMBER clearly two years ago in the wake of the 9/11 attacks in Manhattan one of the most severe tests for the international trade was the cancellation of London organisers Brian and Anna Haughton’s International Fine Art and Antique Dealers Show, America’s top antiques fair.

HAVING run antique furniture businesses in Hampshire and the Midlands, Max Salisbury upped sticks two years ago to make his fortune in North Carolina. Looking at events in America over the past two years his timing could not have been worse, but now he has successfully established a business at 1102 North Main Street, High Point (Tel: +1 336 883 1494) where he displays his speciality – expertly re-upholstered 19th century English furniture in “natural and uncluttered” room settings.

USA: The reputation of Portsmouth-based Northeast Auctions (15% buyer’s premium) has predominantly been built on selling Americana, but this New Hampshire auction house hope to target greater numbers of UK and European collectors and dealers by including more European material in their five major annual sales.

VINTAGE fashion seems to be one of the most vogueish collecting areas internationally, and I hear serious fashionistas queue up for hours to get among the frocks at the Manhattan Vintage Clothing Show, to be held on October 10 and 11 at the Metropolitan Pavilion, 125 West 18th Street, between Sixth and Seventh Avenues in New York City.

At just over $12m (including premium) US auction house Doyle New York made a significant contribution to the series of Asian Art sales held in Manhattan last week with their September 16 auction of the F. Gordon Morrill collection of Chinese porcelain. They found buyers for 82 per cent of the 115 lots, but far and away the star attraction was this large 141/2in (37cm) high Yuan dynasty blue and white pilgrim flask of c.1345.

After 42 years as one of the American Midwest’s leading auction firms, Frank H. Boos Gallery have downsized operations, prompting a former employee to launch his own business in Detroit.

FLORIDA has a new quality fair with the launch next February of the Palm Beach Jewelry and Antique Show. It will be held from February 13 to 17 in the newly built Palm Beach Convention Center at West Palm Beach and is intended to become an annual event.

LONDON organisers Brian and Anna Haughton long ago conquered the Manhattan fairs scene, first with their flagship International Fine Art and Antique Dealers Show, which celebrates its 15th anniversary next month, then with their specialist fine art and Asian art fairs.

International Fine Art Expositions are to repackage its portfolio of Palm Beach art and antiques fairs as the events move to a new venue for 2004. In an effort to distinguish the top-tier fairs from the proliferation of ‘tailgate’ events in southern Florida – and allowing IFAE’s vice-president Lorenzo Rudolf to place his own stamp on the fairs pioneered by David Lester – the three events held this year in a marquee will become two next year at the Palm Beach County Convention Center.

THE United States has taken a lead in art restitution by setting up a website to track Nazi-looted art. The Nazi-Era Provenance Internet Portal which has just gone online, will provide a database of museums collections – 70 have signed up so far – for checks on art that disappeared in Europe between 1933 and 1945.

Representatives of a US company trading in class action certificates are coming to London to meet UK recipients of vouchers relating to the Sotheby’s/Christie’s price-fixing settlement in the USA.

US: STAR lot in the Stair Galleries of New York State sale scheduled for September 6 is this set of 10 George III mahogany dining chairs (2 + 8) originally owned by The Rt. Hon. the Viscount Downe at Wykeham Abbey in Yorkshire.

Sotheby’s have acquired the inventory and reference library of H.P. Kraus, the venerable New York dealers in books and manuscripts, which they will sell in a series of auctions this autumn.

FROM September 25-30 some 34 leading dealers from France, Italy, England, Sweden, Canada and the United States will gather at The Seventh Regiment Armory, Park Avenue, New York City for the fourth International Art and Design Fair.

WE frequently comment on the way in which successful dealers have to chase business wherever it may be and a case in point is Mayfair dealer Alistair Sampson who will not be seeing much of his Mount Street, London W1 showrooms once autumn is upon us.

NEW York’s Chinese Porcelain Company hold their autumn exhibition Recent Acquisitions, Fall 2003 from October 9 to 25 at their elegant galleries at 475 Park Avenue at 58th Street. Some highlights from the exhibition will be displayed on their stand at the International Art and Antique Dealers Show at Manhattan’s Seventh Regiment Armory from October 17 to 23.

Anyone who has studied the Americana market in any detail will know how important surfaces have become to its many folk art aficionados. Original paint is not just a bonus – it can often be the difference between $1000 and $10,000. And it can happen here, too.

A Massachusetts auction house is being sued for breach of contract and malpractice after a Chinese vase it sold for $23,000 returned to auction six months later at Christie’s Hong Kong where it brought $1.55m.

Coming up in new York: A large complement of classic American posters by James Montgomery Flagg are featured among the WWI and WWII images in Swann Galleries’ annual summer sale of Vintage Posters in the Big Apple on August 6.

With a five-year non-compete clause behind her, Leslie Hindman has returned to the auction world with a new 12,000-square-foot auction room in Chicago’s West Loop.