News

CAMPAIGNERS against the illegal trade in ivory want to end the exisiting policy which allows any antique dealer to appraise the age of ivory in works of art.

On a day when early pieces took the top prices at Mallams (15% buyer's premium) sale on March 3, one of the earliest was this late 16th century Venetian bronze inkwell, right.

THE first day of a Belle Epoque sale held by Doyle of New York on February 25-26 awoke what one might, with greater reason than most, term a sleeper – the remarkable piece of furniture, catalogued as “An Italian Baroque style Mahogany Bed”, seen right. The bed was part of the Woodruff collection, comprising stock from a former Hollywood business that from 1922-60 was a popular rental source for the film studios, but stock that for the past 40 or more years has been in storage in Oklahoma.

SOTHEBY’S have just published their fourth quarter and year-end results for 2003, showing the company to be in a much better financial state than at the end of 2002.

ALTAR surrounds and other architectural elements from a 19th century Belgian church proved one of the bigger attractions at a February 8 sale held by in Los Angeles by Bonhams & Butterfields – a sale titled ‘Revival of the Centuries’.

PROMOTION is the strong point of Richard Gardner, chairman of the Petworth Art and Antique Dealers’ Association, and he tells me the association is holding a Treasure Hunt on April 24. The prize actually is well worth winning, a nice antique silver-gilt caster.

HOT on the heels of the distinctly glitzy and upmarket Palm Beach Classic, a new fair, the Palm Beach Jewelry and Antique Show, moved into the same venue, the new Palm Beach County Convention Center, with a broader-based, much larger fair, and pulled it off.