UK

Bonhams have announced a major strengthening and enlargement of the ceramics department at their New Bond Street rooms with the immediate appointment of two former Sotheby’s specialists.

It was catalogued as Bow c.1760 but this English porcelain coffee cup seen at Bamfords of Derby on July 25 was identified as belonging to a much rarer class of porcelain associated with Charles Gouyn and a short-lived London concern in St James’s.

This unusual 18th century bookstand or tray top commode, measuring 2ft 4in (71cm) wide, made a multiple-estimate £20,000 (plus 17.5 per cent buyer’s premium) at Dukes of Dorchester on July 26.

Majority of auctioneers and dealers breath sigh of relief, but other were not so fortunate.

Soon after marrying his young wife Jane, William Morris commissioned his friend Philip Webb to build them a house. The end result, completed in 1859, was Red House, named after its steep red-tiled roof.

High drama at the Chichester auction rooms of Henry Adams on July 19 when this pair of Chinese famille rose moon flasks shot to £760,000. The price, a house record, is also the fourth highest ever achieved in a UK auction room outside of London.

DESPITE the odd flooded cellar and car park, ATG are not aware of a single UK auctioneer in affected areas who will not be going ahead with their sales in the coming week.

PHILLIPS de Pury look to have taken another step to increase their influence as a major player in London’s contemporary art market by forming a new partnership with The Saatchi Gallery.

LONDON has gained ground in the global art market during 2007 with over $2.35bn in sales at Christie’s and Sotheby’s for the first six months of the year. In their US rooms the two leading auctioneers took $2.6bn over the same period.

This summer has seen a spate of sleepers awoken in provincial salerooms, but inevitably the one that grabbed the headlines in the national press was the tale of the rediscovered ‘Titian’.

After more than 50 years in the business, Worcestershire auctioneer Philip Laney is to close his firm and take up a consultancy post with chartered surveyors and land agents Doorbars.

TRACEY Emin, who recently launched a scathing attack on Tower Hamlets Council after it granted a licence for a controversial three-month “city beach bar” in a car park yards from her Spitalfields home, is a regular visitor to Spitalfields Antiques Market, most recently looking for a tiara to wear to charity balls.

MARKS, one of London’s best-known silver dealerships, are to refocus their operations, moving out of costly showrooms in Mayfair’s Mount Street.

In celebration of Fellows & Sons’ 130th anniversary, students and practising goldsmiths were invited by the Birmingham-based auctioneers to submit a design for a piece of utilitarian silver.

When the Dorchester Fine Art saleroom Duke’s sold two rediscovered panels of Dominican saints by Fra Angelico for £1.7m, it was one of the best documented events outside the London rooms accompanied by months of pre-sale media coverage.

FOR the third time this year, a dealers’ survey has highlighted the unpopularity of the Artist’s Resale Right in the trade and the indifference of a majority artists to the ruling.

EDWIN Dyson of Blind Lemon Events, who organises vintage fashion fairs across the UK, recently advertised in ATG seeking deco dealers for a garden party on Sunday, July 29.

One of the quirkier and more unusual offerings to feature in Christie’s £3.7m sale of English furniture and works of art on June 7 was this rare Elizabethan map fragment, one of the first tapestries ever produced in England.

In the 1950s, a farmer in Ingatestone, Essex found a tiny silver tag measuring just 3/4in (1.8cm) long on his farm. Shaped like a shield with a ring, one side was engraved LORD RICH above a stylised bird and the other featured a family crest.

FREQUENTLY, the most interesting object in someone’s garage is not the car.