News topics

Fashionably-clad women queuing to try on the new season’s must-haves is a common enough sight in any high street clothes shop, but in the late 18th century men gave as much thought to their appearance as the fairer sex.

Exhibitors at the 2003 Monaco Biennale are invariably reluctant to go into detail about sales and, of course, a lot of business is done in the weeks and months after the fair as a result of contacts made. But it was clear that not all participants at this year’s Biennale (August 1-17) had enjoyed the same level of activity.

Fred T. Jane is a turn-of-the-century artist who doesn’t make much of an impact in the sort of standard reference works that line the office walls of serious auctioneers and dealers.

Consigned to Sworders by a dealer who had bought it when clearing a London office, this George III patent extending mahogany dining table created a massive amount of interest when offered by the Stansted Mountfitchet auctioneers on September 9. “When it arrived it was so obviously a good thing,” said specialist Guy Schooling who found two potential candidates for the maker, S. Martin, whose name and the inscription Invenit et Fecit appeared on a brass plaque applied to the base.

COMING in well over estimate, the auctioneers team trounced their dealer opponents with a 6-1 scoreline in the first annual Dealers v Auctioneers football match.

Laure de Beauvau-Craon has announced that she will step down as chief executive of Sotheby’s France at the end of the year. She has held the post since 1991 and will be remembered for successfully lobbying the European Commission to bring about the abolition of the domestic auction monopoly of France’s commissaires-priseurs.

TURNOVER and the number of fine art items offered at auction globally have fallen dramatically this year, according to two of the leading market trackers. The British-based Art Sales Index, who record hammer prices of pictures over £250/$400, sculpture and miniatures over £1000/$2000 and photographs and prints over £2000/$3000, have noted an 11.5 per cent drop in the number of lots offered from the 2001/2002 season to that of 2002/2003.

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.

FAIRS dominate the diary this week as they do the current trade scene generally, but that it not to say dealers have forgotten the arts of self-promotion. Celebrating the 50th anniversary of his business, J. Collins & Sons, Devonshire dealer John Biggs is best known as a period furniture dealer. But he always carries a good stock of paintings and holds his 47th picture show at his showrooms at 28 High Street, Bideford this month.

Matthew Boulton: Ormolu by Nicholas Goodison, published by Christie’s and available from the Antique Collectors’Club. Tel: 01394 389950 ISBN 0903432706 £85hb

Costume Jewellery by Judith Miller with John Wainwright, published by Dorling Kindersley. ISBN 1405300140 £20hb (pub. date October 2).

LINCOLNSHIRE-based Grosvenor Exhibitions are professional organisers in a number of fields, not just antiques, but they are upping their antiques profile with a new Midlands fair scheduled for December.

CHISWICK-based dealer in studio pottery, Joanna Bird, presents her seventh annual exhibition at Browse & Darby, 19 Cork Street, London W1, from September 15 to 20, centred on the work of eight leading contemporary potters, Elizabeth Fritsch, Julian Stair, Edward Hughes, William Plumptre, John Spearman, Daniel Fisher, Michael O’ Brien and Danlami Aliyu.

THE list of manufacturers who made cocktail shakers and accessories in the interwar years reads like a roll-call of the great luxury houses of the early 20th century: Asprey, Cartier, Tiffany, Hermès, Alfred Dunhill, Louis Vuitton, Puiforcat, Lalique and Baccarat. However, the firm responsible for some of today’s most coveted cocktail shakers is J.A. Henckels of Dusseldorf.

THE Wallace Collection’s exhibition From Palace to Parlour, A Celebration of 19th century British Glass may not shed any new academic light on the subject but it draws attention to a period often ignored by traditional glass collectors: the 19th century. “The 19th century has been completely overlooked,” says independent scholar and glass consultant Martine Newby who curated the exhibition on behalf of the Glass Circle.

Monart glass specialist and collector Ian Turner is a familiar name to many in the trade, having devoted the last two decades to buying and researching this vividly coloured 20th century Scottish art glass. In addition to building a 260-piece collection, he has also contributed to several books including Ysart Glass, edited by Frank Andrews, 1990.

Scam letters targeting small businesses continue to fall through the letterboxes of Britain’s antiques dealers.The Antiques Trade Gazette has warned in the past of the dubious practices of firms with official-sounding names who ‘offer’ to register dealers under the Data Protection Act for £95.

The Antiquities Dealers’ Association have welcomed the news that Switzerland looks set to ratify the 1970 UNESCO Convention which calls for signatory countries to collaborate on the repatriation of stolen and illicit works of art.

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.

The market for cricket memorabilia is dominated by Australian and UK collectors who battle every summer for the best entries in London’s major June and July sporting sales. This year Melbourne-based Ludgrove’s (15% buyer’s premium) joined the major houses and held a Literary, Historical and Sporting sale on July 29 at St James DeVere Cavendish Hotel.