News

What Bonhams are billing as “one of the world’s greatest portrait miniature collections” will go on sale in their Bond Street rooms on April 22. The 175 English and Continental miniatures, which have been on loan to the Scottish National Portrait Gallery for the past three years, date from the 16th to the 19th century and are estimated to fetch in excess of £1m.

A MASKED gang took a substantial quantity of antique jewellery during a robbery at the Petersfield Antiques Fair held at the Festival Hall in the town from February 6-8.

THE first of this year’s three Olympia Fine Art and Antiques Fairs is upon us when, from March 2 to 7 some 180 dealers mount a varied and colourful display at the West London exhibition halls. This is the only Olympia with no datelines and it gives the dealers in contemporary and 20th century items all the scope they need for a stylish, eye-catching display.

THIS year is the centenary of the foundation of the Georg Jensen silversmith workshop in Copenhagen, and to mark the anniversary the international Jensen specialists The Silver Fund hold an exhibition devoted to the work of one of the most renowned designers of the Jensen firm, Henning Koppel (1918-1981).

Belgian rooms content but no more with 2003 performance: 2003 was a “slightly up-and-down year” for Horta of Brussels, according to firm director Jean-Pierre Julien, but he was satisfied with a four per cent increase in sales from 2002, making it Horta’s most lucrative year since they were founded in 1982.

Local trade fare particularly well at Powderham: TWO weeks ago, when Sue Ede of Cooper Antiques Fairs promised her new West Country Antiques Fair at Powderham Castle, near Exeter, would be “an antiques event of a quality not seen before in the West Country”, I must admit I thought that a very bold claim indeed.

Cheffins of Cambridge are celebrating what must rank as one of the most dramatic – and certainly one of the highest – prices ever recorded in the UK provinces after their February 11-12 sale that included a pair of white marble seated figures by Sir Henry Cheere (1703-81).