News

AFTER what seems an unending number of complaints about unscrupulous online fair guides charging for unwanted advertising, the Antiques Trade Gazette has now heard about what appears to be a new scam.

Londoners are steeling themselves for the introduction of the daily £5 congestion charge on February 17, introduced by Mayor Ken Livingstone in a bid to reduce traffic and pollution in the capital. The Antiques Trade Gazette has been asking members of the trade what effect it will have on their businesses.

SOTHEBY’S have started a new staff review and admit that further redundancies are likely.

European Union rules to combat money laundering due to come into force in June will oblige businesses accepting cash payments of more than €15,000 (£9400) to adopt a raft of new procedures.

A secondhand bookshop in Glasgow and two Yorkshire dealers are celebrating a windfall of several million pounds after settling their dispute over the ownership of a lost cache of William Blake watercolours. The folio of 19 illustrations for Robert Blair’s poem, The Grave, one of the most exciting “finds” in art market history, have been sold through London art dealer Libby Howie, acting on behalf of an anonymous collector, for an estimated £4.9m.

NEW YORK specialist dealers in movie posters Posteritati hold some beguiling selling shows, but they look like being onto an international winner with their current one – French Gangsters & The New Wave – which runs at their gallery at 239 Centre Street until March 4.

The Red House, the former home of designer William Morris acquired last month by the National Trust, is due to open to the public in Bexleyheath later this summer. But aficionados of the Arts and Crafts movement who cannot bear to wait that long should take a look at the Clarke Gammon sale in Guildford on February 25, where the residual contents of the Victorian house are being dispersed.