South-east England

JS Auctions are having to cease operations at their Cotefield Farm premises in Bodicote near Banbury.

West Sussex auctioneers Worthing Auction Galleries and Scarborough Fine Art are to merge.

High drama at the Chichester auction rooms of Henry Adams on July 19 when this pair of Chinese famille rose moon flasks shot to £760,000. The price, a house record, is also the fourth highest ever achieved in a UK auction room outside of London.

FREQUENTLY, the most interesting object in someone’s garage is not the car.

IT’S not often that eight sheets of paper bring out eight telephone bidders, but that was the case at Mallams’ sale in Oxford on June 8. Yet these were no ordinary scraps. They were, in fact, important pieces of architectural history.

JAMES Podger is to close his Great Grooms antiques centre at Dorking and concentrate all his efforts and resources on consolidating his Great Grooms centre at Hungerford, Berkshire.

PRESTIGE Ceramic Fairs have a new and attractive venue; in Kent at the 16th century Sutton Valence School which is set in 100 acres of grounds in the Weald of Kent, near Maidstone.

After a year-long fund-raising effort, The Ashmolean Museum in Oxford has just secured the future of its most impressive Chelsea porcelain exhibit.

THE 14th century Penshurst Place with its walled garden is the ancestral home of the Sidney family and is still in the family’s ownership.

The majolica market may have cooled a little since the white hot days of the 1990s but rarities still have the capacity to command imposing sums at auction.

BRIGHTON-based Geoff Rush runs Vinylman, the pomotions company which organises the Brighton Record Fair.

The hotels of Newbury were full of lovers on Valentine’s Day – lovers of Chinese jade. A packed room and a full bank of telephones were buzzing as Dreweatt Neate sold Chinese jade from the collection of the late June, Lady Horlick, including many pieces acquired from the London trade in the 1960s and 1970s and not seen on the market since then.

“We've timed it just right, opening a new fair,” said Trevor Vallis of Wyefairs, who is adding to his portfolio of events in Kent this year.

THERE’S a fairs reshuffle in the medieval town of Rye in East Sussex.

Not exactly your typical ATG reader – this great picture was taken by Lucy Naughton, a 27-year-old with a passion for photography who has been finding inspiration at antiques fairs.

ON December 28, 1792 Anglo-Irish statesman, orator and philosopher Edmund Burke (1729-97) enacted the melodrama in Parliament that became known as the Dagger Scene.

A set of 38 individual original metal printing plates used for the illustrations for John Lennon’s first book, are to go under the hammer on December 2 at Dickins of Middle Claydon, Bucks.

Auctions to centre on Nottingham, Bristol and Newbury as others become offices

ANDY Briggs of Fat Cat Fairs has added Woodstock Antiques Fairs to his other three fairs. However, for the next six months at least the name will not change and it will not be incorporated into Fat Cat’s/Silhouette Fairs’ other events at Abingdon, Burford and Lechlade.

DISCOVERY Real Time are filming at Take Five’s Art Nouveau/Deco Fair at Woking on Sunday, October 29 for their 10-part Real Deal series which focuses on two dealers selling their pieces.