UK

A SUBSTANTIAL reward is being offered after thieves smashed a dealer’s car window and made off with a large amount of jewellery at Sandown Park Fair on April 27.

SATISFYING though Woolley & Wallis’s sale undoubtedly was, the general run of fine silver is still bringing little more than the prices it was achieving a decade and more back.

SINCE moving to premises in Kennetholme, Midgham, Berkshire’s Specialist Auction Services (15% buyer’s premium) have acquired a reputation for selling not just commemoratives and pot lids but also collectable toys.

FOUR house clearances of properties each valued at over £1m meant some long and frantic hours of valuing and cataloguing for Wellers (15% buyer's premium)auctioneer Tim Duggan – three heavy weeks rewarded when the March 13 sale day was one of the best ever at the Surrey rooms with 95 per cent of the 1200 lots getting away notching up a total of well over £100,000.

BOOKS, manuscripts and photographs from The Old Rectory, at Banningham in Norfolk, provided a separately catalogued section of a three-day March 21-23 contents sale conducted by Bonhams and represented 70 years of collecting by the owner, picture restorer Bryan Hall, and his father, the Rev. William Hall, who was at one time Vicar of Barton Turf and Smallburgh.

SIX lots from Bonhams' (17.5/10% buyer's premium) March 22-24 sale at The Old Rectory, Banningham will be making their way back whence they came, National Trust curators having identified them (Bonhams had only spotted one) as having been bought by the Rev. Hall & Son at the 1951 contents sale of Oxburgh Hall in Norfolk. The house now belongs to the Trust which rescued it from demolition.

FEW organisers are reluctant to blow their own trumpet, but Barry Phillips, who as Camfair puts together the monthly antiques fair at The Castle Hall, Hertford, admits he has been a bit too quiet about what he calls “Hertfordshire’s best-kept secret”.

JUST two of the 31 dealers standing at the fourth North Norfolk Fine Art and Antiques Fair at Sussex Barn, Burnham Market over Easter (April 10 to 12) did badly, and although the gate was slightly down on last year spending was definitely up.

THE strength of the decorative market was underlined by a number of lots offered by Woolley & Wallis, (15% buyer’s premium) on March 16, including the day’s best seller, a pair of c.1860 bronze and ormolu twin-light candelabra, one shown right.

Christie’s South Kensington (19.5/12% buyer’s premium) hold three Scientific Instruments sale a year but reserve the spring sale for a restricted number of high-quality objects. Tom Newth, head of the department, reports the market picking up in the last six months, with strong competition for microscopes and Islamic astronomical instruments.

THE March 5 sale at Dee Atkinson & Harrison's (10% buyer's premium) West Yorkshire saleroom was the first antiques offering of the year and, after an 83 per cent selling rate on nearly 700 lots, the auctioneers took encouragement from the way the market seemed to be picking up, with furniture, at last, edging out of the doldrums.

THERE were signs of an improving trade climate at the Antiques For Everyone fair held at Birmingham’s National Exhibition Centre from April 15 to 18, and this is particularly significant at the country’s largest vetted antiques event.

THERE was no doubt about which were the two outstanding lots at Hamptons’ (15% buyer’s premium) March 24 picture sale in Godalming.

UNLIKE the market for oil paintings, where traditional images appear to be going through something of a mini-revival, print auctions show signs of being a sector where the critical mass of demand has shifted permanently towards Modern and Contemporary.

TOWARDS the end of March it was reported that The British Museum and the V&A had joined forces for the first time to acquire a rare Indian 7th century metal statue of a standing figure of the Buddha Sakyamuni, the first to enter a public European collection. After a tour of provincial museums it will be shown alternatively at the two institutions.

ST JAMES'S specialists in Asian art Jonathan Tucker and Antonia Tozer are among the many exhibitors who enjoyed success at the recent International Asian Art Fair in New York where they sold some fine early monumental pieces of sculpture.

SPRING may not seem the optimum time to be selling rocking horses but two Victorian-style examples did well at the March 4 sale held by Hobbs & Parker (10% buyer’s premium) at Ashford, Kent.

FOR more than 20 years Hallidays have been holding selling exhibitions at their picturesque Oxfordshire showrooms at The Old College, Dorchester-on-Thames. Over the years to broaden the appeal they have invited guest specialist dealers to participate in the shows.

FOLLOWING last year’s successful launch there will be a second Art Deco Fair on Sunday, May 16 at Eltham Palace in South East London.

IN these days of global marketing and online bidding it is reassuring to know that, just occasionally, with some wit and a little good fortune, one can still make a good wage from a solitary find at the local auction room.