UK

Here’s something you’re unlikely to see much this century, lifesize or otherwise: a cap-wearing boy on a go-kart, commonly known to collectors of Matchbox toys as a Soapbox Racer. It’s the cover lot of Vectis Auction Group’s Matchbox Magic 8 sale, which takes place next week at the Community Hall in Buckingham.

Pictured right is a computer-generated image of the proposed redevelopment site at Camden Lock in north London. The project, scheduled for completion in October 2004, will include entertainment and leisure facilities, restaurants, bars, shops and offices.

A company condemned by the Information Commissioner for misleading businesses into paying unnecessary fees for registering under the Data Protection Act is still targeting antique dealers across the country.

UK: AN educational charity in Derbyshire is offering a substantial reward for information leading to the safe return of the mechanism and dial of a longcase clock.

KENSINGTON-based English porcelain specialist Simon Spero is known internationally for the selling exhibitions at his gallery at 109 Kensington Church Street, London W8, and this month he holds one with a guaranteed appeal.

A support group has been formed by the 100 or so dealers with claims against Anthony Gilberthorpe, the previous owner of Stonegate Antiques Centre in York.

ST JAMES’S sculpture dealer Robert Bowman will be on duty at Maastricht again this year, and at the top fair he will be showing the top names of 19th and 20th century bronzes, such as Rodin and Degas.

NICE to see some new young blood entering the fairs scene, but although she is just 32, London-based French dealer – soon to be organiser – Laurence Paul already has a lifetime’s experience in the antiques business.

Film poster vendor adds to exclusivity of sale by destroying second copy: COLLECTORS have reacted with outrage and disbelief to a statement from the vendors of an apparently unique film poster that a second copy had been deliberately destroyed to protect the sale’s exclusivity.

The annual ski poster sale at Christie’s South Kensington (17.5/10% buyer’s premium), timed as usual to coincide with the winter sports season, jumped into action earlier this month. The auctioneers’ 273-lot offering on February 13 took in all the main long-established European resorts plus some from further afield, and attracted its usual crowd of aficionados in person or on the phone.

FOR nigh on a decade ceramics dealer Andrew Dando’s Spring exhibition, Animal Dando & Friends, has been a West Country institution, but since the firm moved from their long-time premises in Bath to Wiltshire last September many customers wondered if the show would go on.

Newly-formed organisers Antiques Fair Management, a division of Shropshire-based Wellington Market Company, have acquired a series of one-day Sunday fairs at Birmingham’s National Motorcycle Museum.

TOP London specialist in English pottery Jonathan Horne exhibits at major fairs in London and New York and consistently comes up with top-of-the range stock, which he generally sells very well indeed.

MORE Deco news, this time from Wimbledon organiser Paola Francia-Gardiner who as P&A Antiques is seeing a deal of success with her West London decorative events.

The now-defunct firm of Hedges & Butler (est.1667) was one of the oldest wine merchants in England, originally based by the Thames on a site now occupied by Charing Cross Station. The name of the company has now disappeared, but what its own publicity described as “our very interesting collection of old Viniana” provided an eye-catching highlight for Bonhams’ (17.5/10% buyer’s premium) otherwise fairly routine mixed sale of art and antiques in Knowle.

Inspired by the catacombs of Somerset House, the street lighting of Pall Mall and, above all, the Babylonian splendour of the new Houses of Parliament, artist John Martin’s 1841 oil on canvas Pandemonium was an apocalyptic vision of Victorian London that played well to the post-September 11 sensibilities of the US picture trade at Christie’s King Street sale of the Forbes collection on February 19-20.

If you still believe that the Cotswolds are merely the final bastion of traditional brown furniture, you should take another look at Moreton-in-Marsh. Just opposite Astley House Fine Art, where David and Nanette Glaisyer have shown Victorian and other traditional pictures for 30 years, is Astley House Contemporary, the airy, two-floor gallery they opened just before Christmas.

When it comes to wall power there is nothing like a poster to add presence and focus to an interior, and for iconic or cult status, a film poster is hard to beat.

Decorative arts from 1870s Gothic Revival to 1960s Murano glass and everything in between is on offer at Sotheby’s Olympia this month. Their sizeable gathering of over 230 lots, which goes under the hammer on February 27, takes in examples of all the major design movements of the 20th century (and the latter end of the 19th): Art Nouveau, Arts & Crafts, Wiener Werkstätte, Deco and Modernism.

Altfield, who specialise in traditional craftsman-made furniture and objects imported from the Far East, have a well-established mainly trade outlet at the Chelsea Harbour Design Centre, but last November, they branched out with a new retail showroom at 320 King’s Road, SW3.