UK

SIGN up now for the joint RICS/SOFAA Auction Law Conference which will take place in London on Monday, January 22.

JOHN Taylor was the Sawrey joiner and wheelwright, whose wife and stout, elderly daughter, Agnes Anne, kept the village shop immortalised by Beatrix Potter in Ginger and Pickles. But the first Taylor to appear in one of her books was his son, young John, who was the model for the terrier carpenter John Joiner in The Roly Poly Pudding.

AT £420m, the deal would have brought St James Capital a 70 per cent profit on the £245m they paid for the complex just two and a half years ago. But it appears that last week’s London Evening Standard scoop on the sale of Earls Court and Olympia was, at the very least, a little premature.

The Museum in Docklands have acquired a rare and significant archive of 18th century papers highlighting London’s role in the transatlantic slave trade.

THERE’S a fairs reshuffle in the medieval town of Rye in East Sussex.

DAN Godfrey is opening an antiques and collectables centre at the Grade 2 Listed late-18th century watermill at Barton Le Clay, north of Luton in Bedfordshire.

Not exactly your typical ATG reader – this great picture was taken by Lucy Naughton, a 27-year-old with a passion for photography who has been finding inspiration at antiques fairs.

MISSING Book Fairs, named after the fairs’ eponymous organiser, Chris Missing, are moving one of their six events from one stately home to another.

JUDITH Lidell is celebrating the success of her first vintage fashion fair on her home patch of Newcastle-on-Tyne on Sunday November 19.

THE Christmas lights are now on in Camden Passage, but for some dealers this will be their last festive period in the London antiques thoroughfare.

On November 28 Spink officially opened the new showroom at their existing headquarters at 69 Southampton Row.

The highlight of this year’s Old Master picture series in London was a pair of Roman vedute by Bernardo Bellotto (Venice 1721-1780 Warsaw).

Christie’s are to increase the number of European salerooms offering the Christie’s Live online bidding feature.

THIS year’s ATG-sponsored Charity Football Match between the Dealers and Auctioneers has raised more than £10,000 for Breast Cancer Haven.

The 21st century equivalent of an unknown masterpiece brought in to the front counter of a saleroom must be the treasure that surfaces on an auctioneer’s computer via a routine email.

ROBERT Dodd is the director and auctioneer at Greenwich Auctions Partnership, in the Old Woolwich Road, just a cough away from the River Thames.

NOTTINGHAMSHIRE police are planning to return £24,000 worth of antiques at the Newark fair this Friday to dealers who accepted cheques from a fraudster.

Initially catalogued as “an Eastern walnut three-tier table, brass mounted and fitted three flaps, 2ft (64cm) wide when open” and estimated at just £150-200, the appraisal of this stylish table seen at Simon Chorley of Southam, near Cheltenham, Gloucester on November 30 was radically upgraded when it was identified as the work of Aesthetic architect and designer Edward William Godwin (1833-1886).

ON December 28, 1792 Anglo-Irish statesman, orator and philosopher Edmund Burke (1729-97) enacted the melodrama in Parliament that became known as the Dagger Scene.

On November 27, the Guild of Arts Scholars, Dealers and Collectors took another important step in its development with the installation of the Master, Wardens and Court of Assistants. The Guild represents all those with a commercial interest in the world of historic arts as well as collectors and curators. It was registered by the City of London in September.