London

HE HAS suffered a few knocks to his character in his 110-year history, but when Golly’s life began over a century ago, it was hard to find anything not to love about him.

LAW Fine Art could hardly have timed their latest sale better: a collection of Cotswolds Arts and Crafts with primary provenance by leading practitioners Barnsley, Gimson and Lethaby to be sold on April 5.

Running alongside the Italian Renaissance Galleries in the V&A are the museum’s three original refreshment rooms dating from the 1860s.

ATTEMPTS by Sotheby’s (20/12% buyer’s premium) to breathe new life into the traditional British picture market by creating the category of British & Edwardian Art met with mixed success on the afternoon of March 10.

2005 looks set to be a bumper year for single-owner sales organised by the London rooms.

The Fine Art Society unveiled the final part of its year-long makeover on Tuesday, March 14 when they opened their new lower gallery.

TRADE minister Lord Sainsbury has told the House of Commons culture committee that implementing Droit de Suite effectively and comparatively cheaply is now the big challenge facing the Government.

SPRING Olympia, held from March 1 to 6 at the West London exhibition centre, changed its name this year to Fine Art, Design & Antiques and, although around half of the 170 or so exhibitors had traditional antiques, the 20th century design and contemporary look dominated.

by Ian McKayLAST summer, when a large Biggles collection was put up for sale in Swindon, results were a little disappointing – at least for some of those titles offered individually, where some reserves proved too strong for collectors and trade alike – and around half of the 100 lots were bought in – but W.E. Johns’ famous creation certainly does not lack admirers and in a Bloomsbury Auctions sale of February, a much smaller group of Biggles books, mostly from one source, brought good prices.

A SURVEY has unveiled the hostility of antique dealers to the London Assembly’s bid to extend the congestion charge to Kensington and Chelsea.

FAMOUS West End department store Heal’s is the sponsor of the V&A’s major spring exhibition, International Arts and Crafts, which will be held at the museum in South Kensington from March 17 to 24.

NEWS too, of confident moves in the fine art trade. After a career in the London art world spanning some 45 years, Martin Summers has, just after his 66th birthday, set up his own gallery and dealership, Martin Summers Fine Art Ltd, at 54 Glebe Place in Chelsea.

The market for Clarice Cliff may not be the spirited beast it was five or six years ago when Christie’s South Kensington’s specialist sales could routinely expect to boast 80-90 per cent selling rates by lot.

IN February 1885, a 21ft long illuminated manuscript dating back to the 1320s was exhibited to the Fellows of the Society of Antiquaries in London.It was described as “a very curious Genealogical Roll of the Kings of England” whose “chief point of interest is the artistic excellence of the figures”.

Police have issued this CCTV image of a man wanted for questioning in connection with a theft at a Greenwich antiques shop.

The venerable Mayfair dealership The Fine Art Society, whose Bond Street premises are currently undergoing stage two of a refurbishment, has announced two youthful appointments to its board of directors.

WITH MacArthurmania gripping a nation already gearing itself up for the bicentenary of the Battle of Trafalgar, this should, in theory, be an auspicious year for the UK marine pictures market.

Almost a quarter of a century after it was stolen from its walls, the Courtauld Institute of Art Gallery is again appealing for the return of a Japanese woodblock print that once belonged to Vincent van Gogh.

DISTINGUISHED Kensington early English pottery specialist Jonathan Horne, whose stock is as popular with his many American collectors as on the home market, returns from the New York Ceramics Fair to his shop at 66c Kensington Church Street, London W8 from February 22 to March 5 for his 25th annual exhibition.

Buoyed by rising stockmarkets and the continuing strength of the euro against the pound, European private collectors were buying in force at Sotheby’s and Christie’s February round of Impressionist, Modern and Contemporary art sales in London.