News

BONHAMS have appointed Pippa Stockdale as managing director of the company’s Knightsbridge saleroom. Formerly the head of the pictures department at Knightsbridge, Ms. Stockdale joined Bonhams as a cataloguer in 1989 following time at Capes Dunn in Manchester.

ONE of London’s most concentrated areas for art dealing, St. James’s, SW1, has a new gallery specialising in fine antique prints – Isaac and Ede at 1 Duke of York Street (Tel: 020 7925 1177).

Although a £12,000 oil by Arthur Spooner (1873-1962) was the most expensive entry in the sale at Derby held by Bamfords (15% buyer’s premium) on December 9-10, perhaps the most eye-catching lot was this Lenci dish, right.

HOT on the heels of the upmarket, well-established Palm Beach Classic, the brand new Palm Beach Jewellery and Antique Show will be launched from February 13 to 17 at the same venue, the new Palm Beach Convention Center. The event is fully booked with a hefty 225 dealers but the astonishing fact is that no fewer than 70 of these are from the UK.

ORGANISER Sue Ede of Cooper Antiques Fairs is promising “an antiques event of a quality not seen before in the West Country” with this weekend’s launch of her West Country Antiques Fair at Powderham Castle, near Exeter. It seems a bold claim but, on reflection, there have not been that many successful quality fairs in the West Country so Mrs Ede may well be on safe ground.

IT was not just Sotheby’s and Christie’s who were generating some exceptional prices for Old Masters in New York in the third week of January. The East 87th Street auctioneers Doyle’s (19.5/12% buyer’s premium) generated keen interest from TEFAF Maastricht exhibitors in the room when they included a moody Gottfried Schalken (1643-1706) canvas in their January 21 sale.

Most Continental auctioneers combine clocks with their furniture sales, and Sotheby’s Amsterdam is alone in hosting the city’s only regular specialist clock and watch outing. These biannual specialist sales attract a mix of local and international dealers and in recent years Sotheby’s specialist Jos Meis has seen an increase in demand from US buyers for decorative French gilt mantel clocks and from Dutch collectors for the quality Dutch clocks in his sales.