Art and antiques news from 2005

SOME areas of the art market seem impervious to the changing winds of taste. One is quality pictures of great European cities by recognised artists which appeal across the usual boundaries of generations and national borders.

Formed by screenwriter and director Andrew Birkin during research for a trilogy of plays, The Lost Boys (first broadcast in 1978) and for his biography of J.M. Barrie, a 19-lot collection that tells the story of his friendship with the Llewelyn-Davies boys and the emergence of one of the best known characters in all of children’s literature, Peter Pan, attracted a great deal of media publicity before being put up for sale at Sotheby’s on December 16.

STUDENTS at Southampton Institute will benefit from a five-year bursary programme set up by the Society of Fine Art Auctioneers and Valuers and funded by former SOFAA chairman Christopher Weston.

The last day of November saw a 633-lot sale at Spink (15% buyer’s premium). In all, this was a very successful sale; the failure rate being a negligible three per cent. The total was £415,486.

Christie’s are to modify their buyer’s premium structure to fall in line with their biggest rival.

Wallis & Wallis, Lewes. November 23. Buyer’s premium: 15 per centSales of arms and militaria can, with their beautifully chased old flintlocks and exuberantly decorated uniforms, somehow skate over the fact that often what is on offer is, or was, associated with the darker side of humanity.

ERICH Maria Remarque’s corrected galley proofs for the 1929, first bookform edition of Im Westen nichts Neues [All Quiet on the Western Front] brought a collector’s bid of £26,000 at Sotheby’s on November 30.

NOW a permanent fixture on the capital’s art scene, the seventh annual Art on Paper Fair will be held from February 3 to 6 at the Royal College of Art, Kensington Gore, London SW7. It will be opened at noon on the 3rd by one of last year’s more colourful characters, Spectator editor, and lapsed Tory shadow spokesman for the Arts, Boris Johnson.

A COPY of the most important document in the history of the Irish nation, the Proclamation of Independence printed at Liberty Hall, on Easter Sunday, 1916, realised £140,000 at Sotheby’s on December 16.

The rise and rise of Winifred Nicholson (1893-1981) out of the shadow of her husband, Ben, can be compared to that of Gwen John, now recognised as at very least equal to the artistic talent of her brother Augustus.

IN late autumn there were three major sales of Orders, Decorations and Medals. Their combined total was £1,373,461 with 2592 lots offered. This compares with a total for 2004 of just over £6m and 6219 lots offered by the London auction houses. (The 2004 annual tabulation for numismatic sales will appear in a future ATG.)

STAYING with the international mood of the Diary this week, Sweden’s top antiques event, the 28th annual Stockholm International Antiques Fair runs at the Stockholm Messan from January 27 to 30 with a preview on the evening of January 26.

BIDDERS at this week’s sale of the Rowler Collection of Georg Jensen silver at Christie’s Rockefeller Center, New York, might be interested to learn that, according to Michael James, founder and director of Jensen specialists The Silver Fund, virtually the entire collection of some 800 pieces was acquired for Rowler by The Silver Fund over the past six years.

A UNIQUE archive of journals and notebooks, including the secret recipe for Tiffany’s signature Favrile glass, is now available for public inspection at the Corning Museum in New York.

The 1150 lots offered at Essex auctioneers Ambrose (15% buyer’s premium) at Loughton on December 9 encompassed most areas of the market and, outside the jewellery, generally sold for three-figure sums.

SOUTH London based Paola-Francia Gardner who operates as P&A Antiques, has been a pioneer of the now booming field of vintage fashion and she holds her first fair of the year this Sunday, January 16.

GOING further afield, The South African Antique Dealers Association hold their national fair in Cape Town on February 19 and 20 with a gala opening on the evening of February 18.

A Dada still life collage by Francis Picabia that came with an equally illustrious trail of previous owners headed the modern art sale at CalmelsCohen (20.33-11.96% buyer’s premium) on December 6.

Clarke Gammon Wellers, Guildford, October 26. Buyer’s premium: 15 per cent Although there were few four-figure highlights in this 711-lot outing, the 100-lot jewellery section had just the type of reasonably estimated, privately entered, material to attract dealers from London and the South East who, between them, secured the lion’s share of entries.

AFTER 50 years at Manhattan’s Seventh Regiment Armory, Park Avenue at 67th Street, it is little wonder that the Winter Antiques Show is the favourite fair of many New Yorkers – and, increasingly, for many others.