London

LONDON: PIMLICO, SW1 has long been a prime London area for antique hunting, but now it is gaining an increasingly high profile as an international centre for decorative work of all descriptions.

It’s QUESTIONABLE how much influence a piece of furniture could have upon the writer using it, but certainly when the writer in question is Graham Greene, a writer of that fame can certainly influence the fate of a piece of furniture.

AS Christie’s and Bonhams followed Sotheby’s in announcing new commission structures last week, Bonhams emerged with the most attractive terms for buyers and added a new incentive for sellers at their Bond Street rooms.

STRANGE to associate the HMV label in any way with fishing, but one of the highlights of Holt’s March 6 sale at the Duke of York’s Barracks, Chelsea, will be this rare copy of Tarpomania – the madness of fishing, written in 1908 by the industrialist and founder of His Master’s Voice, Eldridge Reeves Johnson.

FOR one day only on Sunday, February 16 the London Marriott Hotel in Grosvenor Square will be a magnet for serious collectors of antique arms and armour when The London Park Lane Arms Fair celebrates its 20th anniversary.

English glass doesn’t generally compete with Continental for price, so anyone just looking at the top results from Sotheby’s mixed-owner auction held the day before their Japanese museum dispersal might have got the erroneous impression that home-produced material had played a low-key role.

CLARION Events, organisers of the Olympia Fairs, introduce a new initiative at their Spring Olympia to further emphasise their conviction that presentation and creative stand display in a no-dateline context are the way forward.

LATEST British dealers to cross the Atlantic in search of American sales are Bond Street’s Partridge Fine Arts who, until this Saturday, January 25, hold a selling exhibition at the New York premises of art dealers Dickinson Roundell.

ORGANISERS Gay Hutson and Angela Wynn, who run the successful 20/21 British Art Fair, had fairly modest expectations when they launched their Art on paper Fair at London’s Royal College of Art four years ago but, as you will see at its fifth staging from January 30 to February 2, it has very much found a niche in the crowded London fairs scene.

High quality watches are still in demand but condition is all-important to today’s discerning collectors. At a sale devoted entirely to watches at Christie’s King Street back on November 26, this gold chronograph pocket watch, right, by Louis Audemars c.1870 took £40,000.

CHRISTIE’S have unveiled some major changes for their 20th century decorative arts policy in Europe. The auction house have closed their King Street department and are concentrating all their London activities in decorative arts at South Kensington. They also want to develop and raise the profile of this field in France with regular dedicated auctions in Paris under specialist Sonja Ganne.

LAUNCHED 18 years ago with the interior decorator in mind, a reminder that the thrice-yearly Decorative Antiques and Textiles Fair is still going strong and will be held this week in its trademark marquee in Battersea Park, London SW11 from January 14 to 19.

CURRENTLY decorators’ darlings, the distinctive and different antique dealers David Grocott and Ian Lemon, who work out of Chelsea’s Core One under the name Plinth, are taking a stand at the Spring Fine Art and Antiques Fair at London’s Olympia from February 25 to March 2.

There will be three newcomers among the 100 or so exhibitors at this year’s BADA Antiques and Fine Art Fair, which will be held at The Duke of York’s Headquarters in Chelsea’s King’s Road, London SW3 from March 19 to 25.

Contemporary Decorative Arts, Sotheby’s annual showcase for new craft and design, gets underway for its seventh successive showing next month. For a week from February 13-21, the Bond Street rooms will be given over to the latest in furniture, lighting, ceramics, jewellery, glass, silver and textiles by over 50 designers from round the world, all for sale.

One of the most significant and comprehensive sales of Victorian paintings for some time is to take place next month when The Forbes Collection of Victorian Pictures and Works of Art goes under the hammer at Christie’s King Street. The sale of more than 350 lots comprises almost the entire collection, which was assembled over three decades by one man, Christopher Forbes, of the well-known American publishing family, and was housed until now at Old Battersea House.

LONDON: THERE are just a few places left for the one-day Fakes and Forgeries seminar at Goldsmith’s Hall in the City on January 22. Silver expert and dealer Alastair Dickenson will be the guest speaker. The other speakers include Dr Robert Organ – Superintendent Assayer and Tim Swann – Senior Assayer, both of the London Assay Office.

FOUNDED in 1976, Caroline Penman’s West London Antiques and Fine Art Fair, which will be held from January 16 to 19 at Kensington Town Hall, W8, is now a new year institution and its famously friendly atmosphere has for some time been a gentle way of getting some good dealers back on to the year’s fairs circuit.

Seen here are two lots from the Ronald A. Cohen collection of Books, Prints and Objects illustrative of the History of Dentistry and Teeth, a 674-lot sale held by Bonhams on December 10.

THREE new dealers have moved into Alfie’s Antique Market in London’s Marylebone, bringing the total number of shops in one of London’s most popular and innovative centres up to 80.