Letters to the Editor

The big UK export licensing debate moves on... Ahead of an upcoming seminar to debate the hot topic, here, dealer Daniel Crouch, an expert adviser, defends the system, and Martyn Downer, who criticised it, responds

Decorative arts specialist Keith Baker (previously of Phillips and now a dealer and collector) is no stranger to our Back Page on the topic of receiving his weekly Antiques Trade Gazette.

A few weeks ago you published an article in which you said that an enamel of a Native American was on ivory (ATG No 2760).

Re: the Jiaqing dinner service covered as ‘Rockefeller’ porcelain returns to the rostrum, Auction Reports, ATG No 2761.

In describing the work of the Reviewing Committee on the Export of Works of Art (Letters, ATG No 2763) Martyn Downer says that the ‘often baffling temporary export bar process needs to be reviewed itself’: why?

Further to your Auction Report in ATG No 2761 referring to the Salsbury ‘Hub Lamp’ [right], Edward Salsbury, significantly aided by his son Henry, started to manufacture an oil-powered lamp for mounting on the front axle of an Ordinary Bicycle (the term Penny Farthing is a nonsense*) in 1876.

News that, within just days, the Reviewing Committee on the Export of Works of Art and Objects of Cultural Interest (RCEWA) has temporarily blocked the export of a Rembrandt valued at £71.7m and an Anglo-Saxon mount (which had already passed through the Portable Antiquities Scheme) priced at £1000 raises questions of the seemingly arbitrary and often baffling nature of the committee’s decisions.

I read with interest your article printed in the August 29 edition entitled ‘Weighing in with a hefty result’ (see ATG No 2757).

Christie’s and the Fine Art Trade (FAT) have keenly contested the Charles Lee Trophy in a consistent cricketing fixture, in various formats, since 1976.

Here at ATG we are always pleased to hear from potential new subscribers.

My glossary of terms just grows and grows, this week with additions from art world heavyweights, writes Spencer Swaffer [the antiques dealer based in Arundel, West Sussex].

The Fine Art Golfing Society (FAGS) celebrates its centenary this year.

Spencer Swaffer (Letters, ATG No 2753) asks for additions to his ‘glossary of dealer terms’. Here are a few more.

West Sussex antiques dealer Spencer Swaffer has compiled a glossary of terms with the help of some of his friends and contacts

Further to your kind invitation to readers whose collecting category is missing from the fascinating – but not quite definitive – list provided, may I submit the following additions.

A reader has contacted ATG regarding a pet hate, the “scourge of the antiques fairs” – trolleys.

It all started, as things often do – by pure chance.

Tim Maxwell, partner in art and luxury law, and Matthew Shore, barrister specialising in litigation in art and luxury law, both at Wedlake Bell, give their expert view on a recent case

Might anyone be able to help track down a missing painting by Thomas Fearnley (1802-42), a Norwegian landscape painter of English descent?

The appearance of a British ‘Dandy Horse’ bicycle c.1819 at Lewes saleroom Gorringe’s in May, which featured in Pick of the Week in ATG No 2745, sparked Grosvenor Prints in London to write in.