Scotland

EDINBURGH dealership Georgian Antiques celebrate their 25th anniversary this September and to mark the occasion partner John Dixon will be available for the whole month for free valuations of furniture and other antiques at their warehouse at 10 Pattison Street, Leith Links.

WITH interest in Arts and Crafts and The Celtic Revival resurgent, particularly in Scotland, expect a keen reception for an exhibition to be mounted by the prominent Scottish Arts and Crafts specialists Decorative Arts at Doune.

ONCE again Fran Foster of Centrex, the Birmingham NEC’s organising arm, has proved there is plenty of fair business in Scotland if the quality and mix of stock is right. Her fourth Antiques For Everyone – Glasgow, held at the Scottish Exhibition and Conference Centre from June 20 to 22, proved a success for the great majority of the 80 or so exhibitors and it was commented upon that this Scottish fair has outshone many events further south.

The Scottish Tourist Board has given Rait Antiques Centre a much-coveted three-star Tourist Shop Award under the Board’s Visitor Attraction Grading Scheme.

A NEW association has been launched in Scotland in the hope of providing a united voice for dealers north of the border. The Scottish Antique & Fine Art Dealers Association is the brainchild of Sandra Patterson (the wife of an Ayrshire dealer) who hopes to address the unique challenges faced by Scottish dealers.

FOR decades it baffled many that Scotland could not host a major, vetted quality antiques fair of any size, but that changed in 2000 when Fran Foster of Centrex, the organising arm of Birmingham’s National Exhibition Centre, took her successful Antiques For Everyone formula to the Scottish Exhibition and Conference Centre and launched Antiques For Everyone – Glasgow.

EDINBURGH auctioneers Thomson, Roddick & Medcalf (15% buyer’s premium) dispersed 532 lots at their Edinburgh saleroom on March 15 and auctioneer Sybelle Medcalf felt the market held up pretty well considering the international climate.

ALTERNATIVE investment might be too strong a word for it, but the current desperate state of returns in the stock market and other investment areas does seem to be having a positive effect at art sales, at least in Scotland.

For a Scottish antique, no provenance is more guaranteed to stir the blood than a connection, however tenuous, with a romantic outlaw. At Lyon & Turnbull’s sale on 26 March the link was Rob Roy McGregor, or at least the cattle rustler’s loyal kinsman and Glasgow magistrate Baillie Nicol Jarvie.

FROM April 10 to 13 the Glasgow Art Fair, the largest contemporary art fair outside London, will run for its eighth year in its pavilions in George Square in the heart of the city.

A secondhand bookshop in Glasgow and two Yorkshire dealers are celebrating a windfall of several million pounds after settling their dispute over the ownership of a lost cache of William Blake watercolours. The folio of 19 illustrations for Robert Blair’s poem, The Grave, one of the most exciting “finds” in art market history, have been sold through London art dealer Libby Howie, acting on behalf of an anonymous collector, for an estimated £4.9m.

One of the more mysterious objects at Lyon and Turnbull’s (17.5/10% buyer’s premium) decorative arts sale in Edinburgh on November 6 was this Art Nouveau pewter table lamp. Auctioneer John Mackie could not comment on why the futuristic design, measuring 2ft (60.5cm) high and apparantly unmarked, should have eclipsed a forecast of £300-500 and reached £6500.

WHILE the Irish picture market continues to boom, the Scottish market showed serious jitters at Bonhams Edinburgh (17.5% buyer’s premium) on the evening of December 5.

Edinburgh’s Royal College of Surgeons was the venue on the evening of October 29 for the sale by Thomson, Roddick and Medcalf of four important and original wallpaper designs by William Morris (1834-1896).

A second hand bookshop in Glasgow and two dealers are locked in a legal dispute over the ownership of a lost cache of William Blake watercolours, valued at over £1m.

THIRD time lucky for the annual Antiques For Everyone – Scotland fair, held at Glasgow’s Scottish Exhibition and Conference Centre from August 23 to 25.

This large Highland hunting landscape by John Frederick Herring Senior proved to be the highlight of Sotheby’s annual auction series held last week at the Gleneagles Hotel in Scotland, when it sold for £470,000 (plus 19.5/10% premium) to London dealer Richard Green Fine Art bidding on the phone.

Many sporrans are military or feral in character, but this leather wallet had graced the groin of Sir Harry Lauder, legendary laird of the music hall. Winston Churchill sounded dangerously like Samuel Johnson when he described the folk singer and comedian as “Scotland’s greatest ever ambassador”, but there is no doubt that Lauder, though dead since 1950, remains popular with tourists who swallow his sentimental vision of the old country.

Golf has always been a subject that can have a dramatic effect on the price levels of artists who normally make little impact in the salerooms. Take the case of Frank Watson Wood (1862-1953), a Berwick-on-Tweed watercolourist who specialised in landscapes and marines, the best examples of which fetch around £1500 at auction.

FOR the third year running, Birmingham-based fairs director Fran Foster stages Antiques For Everyone – Scotland and she hopes that from August 23 to 25 the exhibitors – more than 100 dealers at Glasgow’s Scottish Exhibition and Conference Centre – build on the considerable success of the first two.