UK

Halls Fine Art of Shrewsbury are to change their regular antiques sales from a Friday to a Wednesday from September. The firm’s Welsh Bridge salerooms will open for a pre-sale public viewing on Saturday mornings for its fine art and antiques sales in a bid to attract a wider public audience.

Solutions should cause ‘least distortion’ to the art market: THE Government have launched the review – announced in this year’s Budget – into how they can improve on the current hand-to-mouth system of saving art for the nation.

TO celebrate the National Art Collection Fund’s centenary, the National Film Theatre in London is to host a six-week season of films this autumn about art and artists.

Victorian painter Sophie Anderson (1823-1903), who specialised in heart-warming female figure studies, appears rather infrequently on the market, but a Hampshire religious institution furnished the Lewes branch of Gorringe’s (15% buyer’s premium) with two good quality, signed half-length female subjects in untouched condition for their June 12 picture sale.

THE Graham Rickett Collection of rowing ephemera offers a unique opportunity for collectors when it comes up for sale as part of Bonhams’ annual sale of traditional rivercraft and marine ephemera on Saturday, July 19 at the Boat Tents, near Leander Club, Henley-on-Thames.

Highlight of the June 24-2 Neal Sons & Fletcher was this Regency green marble-topped table. With brass scroll supports decorated with swan heads and a trefoil base veneered in burr walnut, and with ebony stringing and mouldings, the 2ft 2in (66cm) diameter, 4ft 4in (1.32m) high table had been ensconced in a local country house for many years.

Many in the art world will know of Professor E. T. ‘Teddy’ Hall through his work in archaeometry, the science used to establish the age and origins of much of the world’s ancient art and artefacts, using tests such as thermoluminescence.

NOW into its fourth year and an established favourite with very much its own following, The Original London Textiles, Vintage Fashion and Accessories Fair will be held this Sunday July 13 at Hammersmith Town Hall, King Street, London W6.

NORFOLK fair organiser Liz Allport-Lomax has been in business as Lomax Antiques Fairs for nigh on 12 years and in that time has made the East Anglian fairs scene her own, wisely concentrating all her efforts on the area she knows and not straying too far from her home turf.

THERE was a greater concentration of Chinese Export porcelain at Christie’s King Street (19.5/12% buyer’s premium) than at either of the other two houses with a single- owner collection of European-subject Export ware offered in a separate catalogue on June 17 and a private collection of famille verte porcelain in mixed condition that was 99 per cent sold by lot and by value, included in their mixed-owner sale on the same day.

THIS weekend from July 11 to 13 Essex organiser Robert Bailey returns to his top provincial venue, Tatton Park, near Knutsford for the 34th Cheshire Summer Antiques and Fine Art Fair.

FROM August 21 to October 26, The Wallace Collection in Manchester Square will host what they bill as the first ever exhibition in London devoted entirely to Regency and Victorian glass.

LOOKING for the next big thing in art? You can choose from over 350 hand-picked artists, in a variety of media, whose wares are on show this month at Fresh Art, at the Business Design Centre in Islington, London N1.

TUCKED away through an archway next to wine merchants Berry Bros & Rudd in St James’s Street is Pickering Place, home of Nevil Keating Tollemache – formerly Nevill Keating. Pictures until director Angela Nevill formed a new company with Michael Tollemache, a past chairman of the Society of London Art Dealers and a specialist in Old Master and 19th century paintings.

JUDGING by the sales of photographic images at the recent artLONDON, the public appears to be warming to the genre as a serious art form. A further test of its acceptability may be gleaned until July 26 at Cork Street’s Hirschl Contemporary Art, with the showing of 10 or so photographs (£1000-1800) by Sian Bonnell, whose work is represented in the V&A and Houston’s Museum of Fine Art.

ONCE again Fran Foster of Centrex, the Birmingham NEC’s organising arm, has proved there is plenty of fair business in Scotland if the quality and mix of stock is right. Her fourth Antiques For Everyone – Glasgow, held at the Scottish Exhibition and Conference Centre from June 20 to 22, proved a success for the great majority of the 80 or so exhibitors and it was commented upon that this Scottish fair has outshone many events further south.

Netherhampton House, a wonderful Queen Anne home in Salisbury, was the venue for Duke’s English Country House sale on 16 June. Rented from the Pembroke estate since 1990 by dealer and collector John Parnaby, the elegant stone property operated as both a home and a showroom for Mr Parnaby’s business, Victor Mahy Antiques, specialists in 17th and 18th century furniture and works of art.

Even as the million-pound Impressionist and Modern pictures were being knocked down in their King Street saleroom last week, Christie’s were reconfirming their commitment to the currently troubled middle market sector.

Highlight of the remainder of the Roy Mickleburgh collection sold by Bristol Auction Rooms on June 24 was this rare monkey band automaton, c.1870. The nine-piece chamber orchestra includes no fewer than 43 separate movements operated by a French mechanism and is housed in a rosewood veneered two-part case with a 48-note German-made crankwind barrel organ below playing a choice of seven tunes.

On July 21 and 22, Sotheby’s will be holding a house contents sale at Wormington Manor near Broadway. This was the Worcestershire home of interior decorator, Christopher Rowley whose shop in Lower Sloane Street, Belgravia was a familiar meeting point for his large circle of friends and clients until his death in April this year.