Front Page and News

Book dealers seek change to 250-years-old clause in proposed import licensing law.

Sotheby’s is to return to holding auctions in India to take advantage of the growing wealth in the Asian nation. It plans a sale in December at The Taj Mahal Palace hotel in Mumbai.

To mark the centenary of the founding of the Royal Air Force, London auction house Spink is holding a special public exhibition featuring medals and relics on loan from prominent collectors.

A Dutch auction house is planning to launch regular sales in London as, it says, the art and antiques market in Holland has contracted.

ATG selects objects with ivory – from teasets to Art Deco figures – recently sold at auction that may become illegal to sell under the law

When Frances Noble, head of Dix Noonan Webb’s jewellery department, was shown this coronet with a family tradition connecting it to the Duke of Wellington, it was caked with dirt.

The art and antiques trade is calling on the government to re-think its planned restrictions on the sale of antique items containing small amounts of elephant ivory.

Richard Madley, a former director of Dreweatts, has been appointed UK agent for Sydney firm Shapiro Auctioneers, to source objects with an Australian background or provenance to be sold Down Under.

Roland Arkell and Noelle McElhatton on what the new ivory law could mean for art and antiques.

Despite visible condition issues, a pair of carved giltwood console tables, catalogued as c.1740 and later, sailed past modest expectations to bring £65,000 (plus 24% premium) at Dreweatts 1759 of Donnington Priory.

Antiques Trade Gazette can confirm that Chiswick Auctions has proof of good title for a rare group of maps and charts, which the auction house sold last month.

Rountree Tryon Galleries and director James Rountree have been granted a Royal Warrant by Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh.

The new, as yet unnamed law will allow for narrow exemptions to the ban. These comprise:

Early maps and charts, previously owned by a Brazilian banker convicted of money laundering, surfaced for sale at Chiswick Auctions last week.

An oil on copper painting depicting Saint Joseph by the Bolognese artist Gaetano Gandolfi (1734-1802) was the highlight of Brightwells’ spring fine art sale in Leominster on March 21-22.

The Department for Environment Food & Rural Affairs (Defra) is expected to publish a response to the ivory ban consultation this month.

A rediscovered neoclassical painting by Charles Meynier somersaulted nine times over its estimate to sell for €1.8m (£1.57m) at a sale in Nantes.

When the first wave of Kenner Star Wars action figures began arriving on the market in 1978, the Darth Vader, Obi-Wan Kenobi and Luke Skywalker figures came with ‘double telescoping’ light sabres.

The BBC has put the production of antiques game show Bargain Hunt out to tender for a two-year contract, despite speculation that the long-running programme, now in its 50th series, would be axed in a drive to boost the quality of daytime TV output.

An exceptionally rare Western Zhou bronze, taken when the Summer Palace was sacked by British troops in 1860, has been discovered in a house in a Kent seaside town.