News

THE sale on August 16 was the first time Bonhams, Honiton (17.5% buyer’s premium) had held a specialist collectors’ sale without cigarette and postcards after the decision was made to sell these at New Bond Street. With the sale now focused firmly on Goss and crested china, pot lids, Prattware and commemorative ceramics, lots of new buyers flooded in making the sale a big success.

A 19th century Aesthetic movement ebonised Japanesque cabinet was orginally housed in the Yorkshire home of a Mr Mossman, a wealthy Leeds wool merchant. When he moved from his house in Menston, near Ilkley, the cabinet passed into the hands of the new owner, the well-known music critic Ernest Bradbury and has passed by descent ever since.

The four-day Decorex International interior design trade fair runs this year from September 22-25 at the Royal Hospital in Chelsea.

The Decorative Antiques & Textiles Fair, the event that pioneered the decorative look for antiques fairs and the first to realise the growing importance of the interior design trade, celebrates its autumn staging this month at its Battersea Park marquee from September 24-29.

ST James’s art dealer Peter Nahum is behind a website just launched specifically with the art and antiques trade in mind. Called Penseroso, it has taken Mr Nahum and his team three years to develop and although there are already website systems aimed at the trade he feels none has fully understood the specialist needs of a dealer.

FRANCE: François Curiel has regained his post as head of Christie’s France after the abrupt departure of Dominique-Henri Freiche.

A second hand bookshop in Glasgow and two dealers are locked in a legal dispute over the ownership of a lost cache of William Blake watercolours, valued at over £1m.