UK

The strong collecting base for miniatures has cushioned this market from the wider economic vagaries that have affected other more trade-dependent fields such as furniture and silver. Bonhams Bond Street (19.5/10% buyer’s premium) specialist Emma Rutherford reckoned around 80 per cent of entries sold privately in their 193-lot routine miniature and silhouettes sale back on July 1. “Our buyers tend to be retired and tend to have their money readily accessible,” she said.

The Somerset-based restoration and conservation specialists Everett Fine Art Ltd will launch what they believe is the first emergency service for art and antiques this month.

Twice a year Russian silver and icons are included in Christie’s South Kensington’s (17.5/10% buyer’s premium) routine miniature and vertu sales and it was the 44-lot Russian silver section that saw some of the most consistent bidding in this 587-lot July 15 outing.

SCOTTISH provincial silver is one of the only consistently strong areas of the silver market and, if recent sales in Edinburgh are anything to go by, Banff silver is what everyone wants.

THE success of Christie`s marines sale in New York will no doubt be heartening news for Bonhams (19.5/10% buyer’s premium) who have been holding specialist marine picture sales for the last 20 years and whose latest offering, the second so far this year, is due to be held at their Bond Street rooms on September 16.

WE frequently comment on the way in which successful dealers have to chase business wherever it may be and a case in point is Mayfair dealer Alistair Sampson who will not be seeing much of his Mount Street, London W1 showrooms once autumn is upon us.

AS autumn approaches, dealers are marking their diaries for some familiar calls and a favourite entry for the Home Counties trade will be The Petersfield Antiques Fair at The Festival Hall of the Hampshire town from September 5 to 7.

CLUBS: A ROCKY ride perhaps, but Lyon & Turnbull certainly had the best selection of clubs this year and the one real ace to give the market a fillip – a long-nose baffing spoon by George Daniel Brown of Blackheath and St Andrews, c.1850-60.

A biscuit box is probably not every young child’s idea of an exciting toy, but to collectors of tins, advertising and tinplate, the Huntley & Palmers Tribeck lorry tin, 1937, 83/4in (22cm), in Bonhams Knightsbridge’s (17.5/10% buyer’s premium) trains, toys and diecast sale on July 15 was the most coveted entry.

DUELLING pistols often attract considerable interest and one of the top lots in this 1162-lot Welsh sale at Anthemion on 16 July was a pair of pistols by Wogden & Barton, 1795-1803.

Hawk-eyed dealers scouring the London rooms in July for Asian sleepers would have been rewarded by a trip to Christie’s South Kensington’s (17.5/10% buyer’s premium) Asian Decorative Arts 586-lot sale on July 10.

Between 1781-90, when Fidelle Duvivier was at New Hall he created some of the factory’s finest wares, painting in a highly characteristic style figure and landscape compositions. However, as Geoffrey Godden wrote in his Guide to English Porcelain: “His pieces are so rare that I wonder what on earth he did with himself when he was employed at the factory!”

SPECIALIST items took three of the top-selling lots at this George Kidner Hampshire sale on 9 July. One was a 1731 pocket globe by Richard Cushee, a land surveyor, map and globe maker known to have been apprenticed to John Sellers Sr, a leading figure in the London map trade at the time.

LAST year was not a good year for Partridge Fine Art – in fact according to John Partridge, the firm, founded in 1905, suffered their worst set of results in his 46-year chairmanship. Now, however, a change in business direction is helping the Bond Street dealership – one of the capital’s most venerable and traditional – to turn their fortunes around.

NOT everyone sleeps it off on Boxing Day. Lancashire organisers Hoyle Promotions have been organising a Giant Boxing Day Fair at the Empress Ballroom at Blackpool Winter Gardens for more than 20 years and both public and trade attendance grows from year to year.

NOW in its fourth year The Original London Textiles,Vintage Fashion and Accessories Fair continues to make its mark attracting a different crowd to most fairs, many of them from the fashion industry.

ONE can never accuse the energetic Essex organiser Robert Bailey of resting on his laurels, or even standing still for longer than it takes to greet a visitor to one of his fairs. More aware than most independent organisers of the increasing importance of marketing Robert has just appointed Zöe Martin (right) to his permanant staff to oversee marketing and public relations.

NORTH Yorkshire-based organisers Galloway Antiques Fairs continue a busy summer from August 29 to 31 with their fair at Naworth Castle, Brampton in Cumbria. Space limits this event to just 28 dealers but they obviously do business as a good many of them have been with Naworth since the first in 1996.

A man has pleaded guilty to deception charges in an Essex court after conning more than a dozen auction houses across the South East with dud cheques. The extent of Robin Moss’s spree only came to light after auctioneers contacted the Antiques Trade Gazette following a warning in a recent issue and the paper liaised with several police forces across the region.

Taking it in their Stride’s... a £500,000 dispersal on the premises of Courtauld home: AFTER months, if not years, of a scarcity of on-the-premises house sales, this summer has seen the genuine article come the way of a number of provincial auctioneers, the latest being the sale of the contents of Cooke’s House in West Burton, near Pulborough, West Sussex held by Chichester auctioneers Stride’s.