London

CONSTERNATION among Olympia dealers during the recent summer fair that next year their event would not overlap with Grosvenor House has been ended by the Olympia organisers changing their 2005 dates to June 9 to 19.

IN one of the most crowded week’s in London’s arts and antiques calendar, the Grosvenor House and Olympia fairs are still in full swing. Some may ask if we need more in the way of dealers’ selling exhibitions but they would get a dusty reply from the trade.

OVER a period of 30 years, the late Sir Charles Clarke of Broadhurst Manor in Sussex built up a remarkable collection of engravings, drawings and other material by Edouard Travies. He came to be recognised as the leading authority on the artist and his collection of Travies lithographs of La Chasse and other similar suites of plates is perhaps the finest ever to have come onto the market.

A VERITABLE feast awaits lovers of early bindings at Christie’s on July 7, when they present the first part of the Michel Wittock collection, a 118-lot sale of Renaissance bindings, but seen right is something rather special from their sale of June 2.

DR Kaspar J Stock’s interest in chess sets was kindled when he received a traditional red and white chess set as a wedding present in 1960. He spent the next 40 years building up his collection, first hunting around the flea markets and antique shops of Northern Europe and Italy then extending his catchment area further afield to St Petersburg, New York and the Far East.

WOW! The Royal Academy Summer Exhibition is really different this year. Well, the colour scheme is, anyway.

Pictured right is the highlight of what turned out to be London’s Asia Week’s most successful auction.

IN these time-strapped days of TV dinners and takeaways, grand dining is something of a rarity.

GAZETTE journalist Scott Reyburn will find himself the subject of scrutiny rather than being the scrutineer for a change thanks to his contribution to So This Is London, an exhibition that forms part of Art Fortnight London.

NO self-respecting specialist auction of marine paintings would be complete without at least one example from the brush of that most prolific and popular of late 19th century marine painters, Thomas Bush Hardy (1842-1897).

AN instrument maker from Manchester, who switched careers four years ago to become a clockmaker, has won a £13,250 Queen Elizabeth Scholarship to attend a specialist clock restoration course.

FAIR organisers Clarion Events are negotiating a management buyout from Earls Court Olympia, the group just bought by private property fund St James Capital in a £245m takeover.

CONTROVERSIAL artist Tracey Emin (b. 1963) might be outraged by public “sniggering” after the loss of her works in the Momart’s London warehouse fire, but the art world has lost much more than her infamous tent. To many, much more disconcerting is the loss of the large cache of major paintings by Patrick Heron, RA (1920-1999).

THE expansion of Bloomsbury Auctions continues apace with the announcement that they are moving into the chess and games market.

DERBYSHIRE dealer Nick Gent has taken over the London Ceramics Fair from Fred Hynds of Wakefield Ceramics Fairs and formed Prestige Ceramic Fairs to stage specialist events.

ONE of the Thirty-One Original Etchings of Views of Norfolk by John Crome, a portfolio collection issued in 1821 by Freemans of Norwich, that sold for £3200 to an American collector in a Christie’s South Kensington sale of April 29.

IN an unfinished craft binding of crushed red morocco with full doublures, the lower cover with borders of inlaid blue and gilt pointillé cornerpiece, a paper copy of the Kelmscott Chaucer of 1896 was sold for £17,000 to an American dealer in a May 6 sale held by Bonhams.

Comprising 60 oban panels that form 20 triptychs, a concertina form, Senso-e album of c.1895 that sold for £3200 as part of a May 27 sale of original drawings and watercolours, prints and maps held by Bloomsbury Auctions is a record of events of the Sino-Japanese war of 1894-95 in which Japan’s modernised armed forces gained a swift and comparatively easy victory over the much larger Chinese forces.

AT the tail-end of a 500-lot sale of Russian pictures and other works of art held by Sotheby’s on May 26 was a small selection of photograph albums and books, two of which are illustrated and briefly described here.

A MAY 11 sale held by Sotheby’s Olympia to dispose of property from the collections of the late Lord and Lady Menuhin included a collection of material by and about the American writer Willa Cather, who was a great friend of Marutha Menuhin, Yehudi’s mother, and a close friend to all the Menuhin children. She also wrote many letters to Marutha, but all of these were burned after her death, in accordance with the writer’s will.