UK

Pictured on the front cover of the 530-lot catalogue offered by Suffolk auctioneers Abbotts (10 per cent buyer’s premium) on March 12 was a group of Moorcroft pottery assembled by a Southwold collector over the past 25 years.

MID APRIL saw only the second sale held by Bamfords, the Derbyshire auctions firm (15% buyer's premium), but elated auctioneer James Lewis, talking from his mobile whilst filming a new episode of BBC TV’s Flog It!, felt it to be the best he had seen in Derby in at least five years.

This rare and impressive Royal Worcester porcelain model of a Golden Eagle, right, attracted huge amounts of interest from Royal Worcester collectors when it came to the rostrum on April 10 at the Worcester rooms of Andrew Grant (15% buyer’s premium).

JUNE looms and the annual antiques season is due to get underway. Fairs are at the hub of proceedings and while Grosvenor House initiated this summer celebration of collecting and connoisseurship back in the 1930s, the latest addition to the June roster, artLONDON, has made its mark in a remarkably short time.

VETERAN organiser Donald Bayliss, who operates out of Ludlow as Continuity Fairs, reports a stunning response to his first International Antiques and Collectors Fair of Wales, which was launched at the Royal Welsh Showground at Builth Wells over the Bank Holiday weekend of May 3 and 4.

SOLD AT £600 (Temple) in the April 25 sale held by Y Gelli (15% buyer's premium) in Hay-on-Wye was a “much nicer than average” copy of the 1886, privately printed, Lahore first edition of Rudyard Kipling’s Departmental Ditties and other Verses. One of 350 copies of this tall, narrow production, printed on one side only, it was in the original wrappers but with the flap removed, leaving an uneven fore-edge to the upper wrapper.

AUCTIONEER George Kidner admitted after this April 16 sale (15% buyer's premium) that he wished he’d been able to offer more of that currently under-regarded commodity, brown furniture, because while routine silver remains pretty dormant and there was little good jewellery to be found, good quality furniture, along with ceramics, was selling well, sometimes spectacularly so.

FEW images conjure up the nail-biting adventures of John Buchan more than Richard Hannay’s flight across the grouse moors of Scotland in the author’s best-known story, The Thirty Nine Steps.

AS announced earlier this year, Beckenham’s own Brian Simons and Philip Thompson, who trade as DECOFAIRS, relaunch their London Art Deco Fair at the Chelsea Village Hotel, London SW6, on Sunday June 8.

BEFORE we get steeped in the London June fairs, Essex organiser Robert Bailey revives his Petworth Antiques Fair at Seaford College in West Sussex from May 30 to June 1.

WALES’S top dealer in things Welsh, Richard Bebb, holds his annual selling exhibition of vernacular crafts at his showrooms, Country Antiques, Castle Mill in Kidwelly, Carmarthenshire from May 28 to June 7.

IT IS a well-known feature of rock and pop memorabilia auctions, that material relating to the Beatles is easier to sell than that relating to other stars. On this basis, the key to assembling a sale of this genre is presumably to fill it with as much Fab Four memorabilia as possible.

THE auction record for Clarice Cliff was sent tumbling last week on May 14 when Christie’s South Kensington sold this May Avenue charger for £34,000, almost double the previous high of £18,000 paid in December 2001 at Phillips for a charger decorated with the Windmill pattern.

A CHARLES II pattern crown from 1663, the Petition Crown(*), has set a new world record for English silver coins at auction.

A 71-lot sale devoted entirely to rock memorabilia relating to Jimi Hendrix took place on May 15 at Cooper Owen’s (15% buyer’s premium) Auction Gallery in Denmark Street, the bulk of the material coming from the collection of Bob and Kathy Levine who were part of Hendrix’s US management team.

OUR flagship fair and one of the world’s most prestigious antiques events, the Grosvenor House Art and Antiques Fair remains as traditional as strawberries and cream at Wimbledon and Pimms at Henley, but no one can say the most venerable of antiques events has failed to move with fashion.

The first, the finest, the rarest – and with an unbeatable provenance. It is not often that an auctioneer can boast this dream recipe for a lot, but Spink offer this heady mix of ingredients when they open their two-part sale of the Slaney collection on Thursday (May 15).

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.

VERY much a rising star on the international Oriental arts scene, London specialist Ben Janssens moves into the West End next month with the opening of his own gallery right in the heart of the capital’s art dealing district.

BIRTHDAY greetings to the Carmarthen Antiques and Collectors Fair, for a decade Wales’ top antiques show.