UK

DUKE'S of Dorchester are opening a new auction room to allow them to improve their handling for house clearance and deceased estates among other services.

JACK Vettriano (b.1951) is not an artist normally associated with the North East of England, but one of the lesser known facts about Britain’s Most Popular Artist is that one of his first one-man exhibitions, if not the first, was held at the Corrymella Scott Gallery in Jesmond, an upmarket suburb of Newcastle upon Tyne, in 1992.

THERE are few more commercial subjects than children. Accordingly, it was no surprise that this near life-size Italian marble group of two children playing on a balcony (pictured right) by Donato Barcaglia, dating from the late 19th century stole the limelight at Christie’s King Street (19.5/12% buyer’s premium) 19th century furniture, sculpture, works of art and ceramics sale on September 30.

A COUPLE of exotic sleepers swelled the tally at Lays Auctions (15% buyer's premium) September 23-24 sale which also boasted healthy prices for more home-grown fare such as Troika and Newlyn copper.

TWO or three times a year Bonhams (19.5/10% buyer's premium) offer a selection of modern pieces in their monthly Knightsbridge silver and objects of vertu sales. Undoubtedly a growth area of the market, works by major names such as Stuart Devlin, Gerald Benney and Christopher Lawrence routinely feature amongst the top ten lots.

NEXT year’s Watercolour and Drawings Fair will move to a new venue, the Royal Academy rooms at 6 Burlington Gardens, London W1, where it will run from February 3 to 6 with an opening evening preview on February 2.

AT 10.41 on the morning of August 25, 1875, to the sounds of Rule Britannia, Captain Matthew Webb emerged from the cold and choppy waters of the Channel. It had taken him 21 hours and 41 minutes. He had covered close to 40 miles. But he had become the first man to swim from English to French soil.

NEXT year Arthur Swallow Fairs’ International Antiques and Collectors’ Fairs at RAF Swinderby will be held almost a full week before the Newark fair.

RIGHT: the most desirable of the varied wares produced by the small ceramics factory established by Vilmos Zsolnay (1828-1900) in the southwest Hungarian town of Pecs are those created after the 1890s. It was then that Zsolnay perfected his iridescent Eosine glaze and employed his principal designer, Tade Sikorski.

FOR the first time conservation specialists will participate in the Dorking Street Festival.

ATTRACTING dealers from both sides of the Border to McTear's (15% buyer's premium) September 24 sale was a Regency figured maple and parcel gilt breakfast table.

SOME of the 16 shows which comprise the traditional autumn season of selling exhibitions held by the Cotswold Antiques Dealers’ Association have already been covered in this column but here are a few more to whet the appetite.

ESTIMATED at £500-600 in a Keys of Aylsham sale of September 24 but very much the lot that attracted most interest – and a final bid of £10,200 – was the New Testament seen right.

FRENCH dealer in Chinese antique stands, Laurence Paul, is currently showing at an antiques fair in Beijing, but she will be back in time for the first monthly Sunday fair of her winter season on October 17 at the Thistle Kensington Palace Hotel, London W8.

DEALER and, more recently, fair organiser, Jan Hicks moves to the grounds of Loseley Park, a 16th century house near Guildford, Surrey, for her third Antiques & Audacity fair from May 12 to 15 next year.

IT looks very much like the end of the road for one of our long-running provincial fixtures, the Surrey Antiques Fair, the 36th annual staging of which was held from October 2 to 5 last year.

FOUNDED five years ago by Will Ramsay, the autumn version of The Affordable Art Fair runs from October 21 to 24 in a marquee in Battersea Park, London SW11. It is also held at the same venue in March.

AN October 21 sale of historical documents and letters to be held in Ludlow by Mullock Madeley includes a vellum document of 1227, witnessed by Hugh de Burgh, in which Henry III grants the right in perpetuity to hold an annual fair to the Prior and Canons of St Mary Magdelene of Combwell (on the Kent/Sussex borders).

BUSINESS could not be better for Simon Spero, the Kensington Church Street, London W8 18th century porcelain specialist who opened his annual exhibition on Tuesday last week (October 5) at noon.

UNTIL this Sunday (October 17), the second Art Deco Fair to be organised by Woburn Abbey Antiques Centre runs in the Russell, Howland and Bedford Rooms of the North Court of Woburn Abbey.