News

Bonhams are to sell the impressive collection of Minton ceramics from the Minton Museum, Stoke-on-Trent in their New Bond Street rooms this year. The collection will be dispersed in two instalments, with the first 400-lot dispersal scheduled for April 30.

Just the thing to lift the spirits in the cold, dark, stock-deprived days of winter, this spectacular whorl of a tropical centre table received a warm reception at the Salisbury salerooms of Woolley and Wallis on January 8.

SWITZERLAND: The Salon de Mars scheduled for April 6 to 14 at Palexpo, Geneva has been cancelled since it clashes with the Salon International de la Haute Horlogerie at the same venue.

LONDON: Mayfair’s Lefevre Gallery, a leading player on the London art scene since it was founded in 1926, is to close.

Alfred Taubman has tendered his widely expected appeal against his price-fixing conviction. The 76-year-old former chairman of Sotheby’s, who could face up to three years in jail when he comes up for sentencing on April 2, has objected to the use of a quotation from 18th century Scottish economist Adam Smith.

Blackamoor, Taunymoor, Suck a Bubby; Your Father’s a Cuckold, Your Mother told me ....not the most familiar of nursery rhymes, nor indeed one likely to find much favour in the present century, but that rhyme, illustrated right, is only one of 37 found in the second volume of Tom Thumb’s Pretty Song Book, many of which are much more familiar, if not always in quite the same form as we know them now.

UK: THE Government have issued a warning to the trade about agencies attempting to cash in on the 1998 Data Protection Act at dealers’ expense.