UK

Important Summer diary date, the Grosvenor House Art and Antiques Fair will be held in London from June 8 to 15 with the private preview on June 8 and the Charity Gala Reception on June 10.

After years of regular sales at all the major auction houses, marine painting is an area in which top quality works by the most desirable names are in increasingly short supply.

UK: The BADA have issued a description of a woman, operating under a number of names, thought to be responsible for a number of thefts at antiques shops in London. Last week, dealers in Kensington Church Street and in the Fulham Road were taken in by the woman, whose approach was most unusual.

UK: Auctioneer Paul Dunn, formerly of Atwell Martin near Bath and John Nicholson’s of Fernhurst, has set up on his own in Midhurst, Surrey. South Downs Auctioneers will conduct a wide variety of auctions, including agricultural sales, but also plan regular catalogues of antiques and general furniture and effects.

SOUTH London organiser Paola Francia-Gardner, who operates as P&A Antiques, is reviving her London Glass Fair which will be held on Sunday March 7 at the Chelsea Village Hotel, Stamford Bridge, Fulham Road, SW6.

SINCE the 1970s, the new year’s fairs scene in the capital has always really got underway with Caroline Penman’s West London Antiques and Fine Art Fair, which will be held this week from January 15 to 18 at Kensington Town Hall, W8.

ESSEX organiser Robert Bailey travelled North at the end of December and saw the new year in at Harrogate where from January 2 to 4 he held his Harrogate Pavilions Antiques and Fine Art Fair.

LONDON: OPENING in the heart of Greenwich this week is a familiar name in a new location, Walpoles, which is located at 18 Nelson Road, London SE10 9JB (Tel: 0208 305 3080).

Clock dealers spot under-catalogued rarities as regulators continue to set the pace in an otherwise stagnant market: ONE of the few elements of the clock trade to see significant forward strides in recent years is the regulator – the name given to those technically interesting and accurate timekeepers used to set the time of the watches and domestic clocks of Regency and Victorian Britain.

Sotheby’s, who have continued the tradition of separate works of art sales rather than combining them with Continental furniture, were actually able to serve up a double helping in December. Their usual mixed-owner offering on the 12th was preceded by a separately catalogued single-owner sale, called Treasures from the Rothschild Collection, of cameos and other antique jewels, gold boxes, silver-gilt, Limoges enamels and other objects made of precious materials.

Until recently, only three Italian micromosaic Chronological Rome round tables with ebony and ormolu bases by the renowned craftsman Michelangelo Barberi (1787-1867) were known. One is in London’s Somerset House Gilbert Collection (purchased from Sotheby’s New York in 1980), one is in St Petersburg’s Hermitage Museum and a third is thought to have been commissioned by Baron Broderick, 6th Viscount Midleton (1791-1863) but its whereabouts remains unknown.

Following his decision to move to France, the silver reference library of long-time London dealer Brand Inglis will be sold by auction in Salisbury at the end of this month. As part of their silver sale on January 28, Woolley & Wallis will offer an enviable working library that has served Mr Inglis for over 40 years.

The Continental Furniture sale at Sotheby’s Bond Street on December 10 proved something of a struggle, just like the furniture elements offered the following day by their King Street competitors. Only half the 241 lots got away, with demand focussed more than ever on the rarest top quality.

Following the £620 sale of three Wedgwood Ravilious Coronation mugs in November, Tom Delaney of Mallams in Cheltenham recalled seeing a similar mug in a local house – this much rarer example transfer printed with a brick kiln together with a silhouette portrait of Stoke-on-Trent’s most famous son and the inscription Josiah Wedgwood Barlaston 1940 Etruria 1730.

UK: BONHAMS are advertising for a new managing director for their Knightsbridge rooms following the announcement that James Knight is now to head their Bond Street operation. The vacancy has been created as part of a wider reshuffle to allow group managing director Malcolm Barber to concentrate on building business in the United States.

Despite the unpredictable trading conditions of the last 12 months, Tennants posted record trading figures for 2003. Aided by a bumper £1.62m autumn catalogue sale, total sales at The Auction Centre, Leyburn from January to December 2003 were £8.44m (not including premium), a substantial improvement upon the previous year when the North Yorkshire operation posted hammer sales of £7.4m.

LAPADA have confirmed that they will proceed with their new 2004 fairs programme but have put the Cheltenham event back by two weeks.

A National Art Collections Fund grant of £37,500 has helped Ely’s Stained Glass Museum acquire an important early 13th century French stained glass panel of the bust of a king.

THE inscription Wilkes And Liberty No. 45 on this 9in (23cm) diameter Lambeth delftware portrait plate is as good as a date as it refers to the publication of the 45th issue of John Wilkes’ sharp-tongued periodical The North Briton.

THE CORA GINSBURG COLLECTION: Pioneering New York dealer and collector Cora Ginsburg (who died last December aged 92) was passionate about the needlework, costumes and textiles she dealt in.