Art and antiques news from 2005

Star billing at Christie’s King Street sale of selected English and Continental ceramics on December 6 went to three Meissen Augustus Rex covered baluster jars of 1740 with the AR monogram and Dreher’s marks XII to the base.

THE new year for Bloomsbury Auctions kicked off on January 14 with a general sale and opened with a selection of books on heraldry and genealogy from the estate of the late Michael Maclagan. Richmond Herald.

SOTHEBY’S have launched a new international craft award by choosing two winners.

BOOKS, playbills and pictures from a collection formed by the late Gerald Tyler, an amateur actor and producer with the Leeds and Bradford Civic Theatres, founding chairman of the British Children’s Theatre Association and a man who was active in drama education, formed part of a January 8 sale held by Rowley Fine Art of Ely.

The Talbot Walk Antique Centre in Ripley and Wellers Auctioneers in Chertsey are holding a special auction in aid of the Tsunami appeal at Ripley Village Hall, Surrey this Sunday, January 30, at 5pm.

Two of the strongest performances in the December ceramics sales came from the glass sections offered at Bonhams Bond Street on December 8 and at Sotheby’s Olympia two weeks later.

As was reported a couple of weeks ago, regional schools of American painting from the late 19th and early 20th centuries are one of the strongest sectors on the art market on other side of the Atlantic at the moment.

Four antique clocks and two barometers were stolen in a raid on Chislehurst Antiques in Kent in late December.

Hamptons Fine Art Auctioneers have become the latest regional auction business to join The Fine Art Auction Group, parent company of Dreweatt Neate Fine Art and Neales of Nottingham.

A massive gulf exists between the very best quality Meiji period (1868-1912) works and the rest.

What makes a painting totally uncommercial one year and a sure-fire seller the next?Clearly, if there was a general principal of financial success to be learned in the art market there would be rather more dealers appearing in the media’s annual rich lists than there are now.

The Fine Art Auction Group have raised their buyer’s premium across their network of provincial salerooms.

BACK in London, until February 12, Mayfair purveyors of ethnographic and tribal items, the Gordon Reece Gallery, hold a sale of their current stock of antique rugs at their gallery at 16 Clifford Street, London W1. Rugs are offered at half price and, in true High Street clearance style, will be replaced daily “while stocks last”.

By and large the Cumbrian antiques trade were counting their blessings last week after escaping the worst of the floods that engulfed the region.

The Cheltenham Art Gallery & Museum have added two paintings by Joseph Southall (1861-1944) to their internationally recognised collection of British Arts & Crafts.

For the first time in its 19-year history, Atlantique City – New Jersey’s massive indoor antiques and collectables show – is going to allow shoppers through the Atlantic City Convention Center doors on a Friday.

British medals are realising ever higher prices and it seems that buyers almost invariably hail from these sceptred isles.

A new auction high for the Neapolitan Impressionist Vincenzo Irolli (1860-1949) was established by Sotheby’s (20-15.42% buyer’s premium, excluding VAT) last month in Milan when they offered this oil on canvas entitled La Pesca Fortunata (A good haul) in their sale of 19th century pictures on December 13.

Top Right: it may be badly damaged but this 4 1/2in (10.5cm) high Lowestoft blue and white teapot and cover is an exceptionally rare and documentary piece.

The Victoria and Albert Museum will open a new Portrait Miniatures Gallery on March 2.