UK

Organiser launches Malvern fair to run alongside existing venues.

Glass specialists Liz and Mike Flatter will be first-time exhibitors at the IACF Shepton Mallet antiques and collectors’ fair at the Bath and West Showground on Friday to Sunday, January 18-20.

Works by major names in modern art are available in north London this month. The annual London Art Fair might have a contemporary focus, with many of the attending dealerships and surrounding projects concentrating on recent works, but a healthy supply of older 20th century art for buyers is available to snap up from established galleries.

Testament to a vibrant market for vintage Tudor wristwatches, a very scarce Oysterdate – the reference 7031 or ‘Homeplate’ – proved the star of Hansons’ Christmas auction at Bishton Hall, Staffordshire.

A fine example of a dirk, without which no Highland formal dresswear is complete, was among the stand-out lots at Cuttlestones’ (17.5% buyer’s premium) sale at Penkridge on November 22.

Three-day auction at Cumbrian saleroom demonstrates global reach of art and antiques.

MADAM – F Segolini makes some interesting and valid points about the failure of alcohol prohibition in the US (Letters, ATG No 2373).

One of the more unusual corkscrews to come onto what is a fiercely competitive collectors’ market recently was a brass, steel and wooden contraption of the type one may have seen clamped to the bar of fin-de-siècle brasseries.

While £90,000 is an awful lot of money for an empty metal box, this old black painted and gold lettered deed box does bear the magic name of Winston Churchill.

Jane Alexander of Dovehouse Fine Antiques Fairs reports that 2018 was another busy year for her fairs at the Dorking Halls, particularly as she has managed to organise a second room at this Surrey venue.

This unfinished oil sketch of a tree was kept by pre-Raphaelite painter John William Waterhouse (1849-1917) until his death and sold in his last major studio sale, held in 1926 at Christie’s.

A selection of three works priced under £1200 at UK regional auctions.