Art and antiques news from 2002

Frontline forgery: LETTERS home during WW2 were extremely important to soldiers on the front. Each soldier was issued a quota of stamps which were specially overprinted to validate their posting from a specific location.

FRANCE: THE Louis XVI pyramid clock, 2ft 1in (63cm) and confidently attributed to bronzier François Vion, soared to a double-estimate €200,000 (£129,000), despite the fact that the escapement and pendulum suspension had been replaced, at De Nicolaÿ (15/10% buyer’s premium) on June 26.

ITALY: A record price for a painting by Carlo Carrà was established in Italy back on May 21 in a sale of contemporary art held by Christie’s in Milan.

THEY had to meet sometime and it was a colourful clash when the two TV stars, interior designer Lawrence Llewellyn Bowen and dealer/presenter David Dickinson, chanced upon each other at the Ardingly International Antiques and Collectors Fair at the South of England Showground on July 16 and 17.

AT a convivial press lunch at Sotheby’s last week, scribes and dealers mingled to officially welcome the fifth Asian Art in London celebrations, scheduled for November 7 to 15.

AUSTRALIA: RATHER farther to go for an August fair, but no doubt a journey well rewarded is the Australian Antique Dealers Association’s own Antiques and Fine Art Fair.

AFTER a literary foray into the art world with her latest blockbuster Pandora, popular novelist Jilly Cooper will get a taste of the real thing on September 18 when she opens London’s 20/21 British Art Fair.

This month has seen a crop of antique arms and armour offered in the London rooms with Sotheby’s, Christie’s and Bonhams all holding sales in July. Pictured here is the most expensive item of the summer series, a rare cased Colt belt revolver of c.1840, which made £200,000 at Bonhams’ (17.5/10% buyer’s premium) sale in their Bond Street rooms on July 24.

WITH the furniture trade in a selective mood after a patchy round of June fairs, Bonhams relied upon local private buyers and international shippers to purchase the top pieces of furniture at their three-day Chester sale from 26-28 June.

eBay have reported a record $266.3m turnover for the second quarter of the year ending June 30, a 47 per cent increase on the same period last year. Of this, $235.3m came from online transactions.

“SOME types of Bow have revived in popularity and botanical subjects are very popular,” said specialist Deborah Clarke, after a set of four octagonal plates, two shown right, were consigned by a Scottish collector to Bonhams (17.5 per cent buyer’s premium) sale of ceramics and glass in Edinburgh on June 28.

In the week before the world’s leading golfers competed for a silver claret jug on the Muirfield links outside Edinburgh, a much older prize from the Leith Links of the Honourable Company of Golfers of Edinburgh was being contested in Cheshire.

The sale of pottery and porcelain from the Minton Museum Collection took place at Bonhams Bond Street on July 23. The 379 lots realised £714,025 net against an estimate of £400,000.

Great Grooms Antiques Centre at Parbrook, Billingshurst has closed due to the loss of trade since the opening of a bypass two years ago.

PHILLIPS, de Pury & Luxembourg have closed their French and Continental Furniture department with the departure of its head, Thierry Millerand.

A US federal appeals court has upheld the conviction of former Sotheby’s chairman A. Alfred Taubman who had been found guilty of conspiring with rival auctioneer Christie’s International to fix commission fees.

The Free Society of Traders in Pennsilvania (sic) was chartered in England by William Penn as proprietor of the Province of Pennsylvania, in March 1682, a few months before his departure to America.

TOULON-based, but owned by Britain’s dmg, the Societé Française d’organisation have acquired the Cagnes-sur-Mer Antiques Fair which will be held next in the famous Hippodrome of the town in South-West France from September 12 to 16.

Russian Myths by Elizabeth Warner, published by the British Museum Press. ISBN 0714127434 £8.99pb

USA: A stage designer for the Ballets Russes, advertising artist, painter and book illustrator, Alexander Alexeieff, is probably best known for his animated cartoons, but in two posters that he designed for LNER he produced surreal images that were unlike anything previously seen on a train poster.