Art and antiques news from 2004

Signed and inscribed by the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, this short poem called ‘Fancy in the Clouds: a Marine Sonnet’ was written on a piece of seaweed and sent to Charles Lamb.

NATURAL history auctions usually throw up some fascinating lots, from bugs in amber to fossilised fish, from meteorites to a range of precious and semi-precious rocks, and the January 11 sale held by I.M. Chait, in association with David Herskowitz, was no exception.

NONE of the February auctions in Brussels were timed to coincide with the Foire des Antiquaires de Belgique (Belgian Antique Dealers’ Fair), staged from February 6-15, perhaps because this was the first year that the new-look fair had attracted such international attention.

FLUSHED with the successful launch in early February of her West Country Antiques Fair at Powderham Castle, near Exeter, Sue Ede of Cooper Antiques Fairs moves north this weekend to her established Cheshire County Antiques Fair, which will be held at Arley Hall, near Knutsford from March 12 to 14.

PARTRIDGE of Bond Street have registered a 6.8 per cent rise in turnover for 2003, with a pre-tax profit of four per cent.

FINE weather helped the 43rd Stuttgart Antiquarian Book Fair welcome around 6000 visitors, up 20 per cent up on 2003, to the city’s Württemberg Kunstverein from January 23-25. The fair, staged by the Verband Deutscher Antiquäre (German Antiquarian Bookdealers’ Association) since 1962, is the largest of its kind in Germany – the 96 exhibitors included dealers from Switzerland, Austria, France, Israel and the UK (Bernard Shapero from London).

FOR arms collectors, there is a magic to the name Colt and when a rare model in fine condition comes on to the market success is almost given.

ALTHOUGH the market for Clarice Cliff appears to be going through one of its periodic troughs, a private collection coming up for sale still virtually guarantees wide interest.

CONTENTS from one of Galway’s best-known properties will be sold at an unusual auction later this month.

SOLD at Sotheby’s (20% buyer’s premium) for £10,500 on December 9 was a copy in modern limp vellum of the Epigrammata of Joan Latinus, a work that praises John of Austria for his recent victory over the Turks at Lepanto.

MUNICH-based auctioneers Ketterer Kunst reported “steady growth” in 2003 to post an auction turnover of €15.5m (£10.7m), boosted by the €5.7m Tremmel Collection in May.

BONHAMS Knightsbridge (17.5/10% buyer’s premium) Science and Marine outing on February 25 was hardly awash with blockbuster entries, but their disappointment at not selling John Gould’s cased display of humming birds (estimated to fetch £30,000-50,000 but bought in at £12,500 despite pre-sale collector interest) was somewhat allayed by the healthy bid placed for this Victorian octagonal double-cased shell Valentine (shown here).

FINE weather helped the 43rd Stuttgart Antiquarian Book Fair welcome around 6000 visitors, up 20 per cent up on 2003, to the city’s Württemberg Kunstverein from January 23-25. The fair, staged by the Verband Deutscher Antiquäre (German Antiquarian Bookdealers’ Association) since 1962, is the largest of its kind in Germany – the 96 exhibitors included dealers from Switzerland, Austria, France, Israel and the UK (Bernard Shapero from London).

AT 1620 lots, the January 27-28 sale held by Keys (10% buyer’s premium) at Aylsham, was a little smaller than many of the Norfolk rooms’ mammoth events but it followed a familiar pattern. Speedy selling of two- and three-figure pieces was supported by a handful of better offerings selling into four figures.

The Spring Olympia fair, just concluded, will undergo a makeover next year that includes a new name.

DEALERS are always looking out for a seriously undercatalogued lot and at Amersham Auction Rooms (15% buyer’s premium) on February 5 they found one.

This Kangxi period (1662-1722) blue and white porcelain brushwasher was a cut above other entries in Stride & Son’s (15% buyer’s premium) 1007-lot Chichester outing.

AFTER opening his gallery in the autumn of 2002 in the Fuller Building, 41 East 57th Street – a hive of Asian activity in New York at this time of year – Carlton Rochell enjoyed a major success last March with his inaugural exhibition of works from the Wesley and Carolyn Halpert Collection.

Bloomsbury Book Auctions are changing their name to Bloomsbury Auctions and moving to new premises at Bloomsbury House, a substantial refurbished building in Maddox Street, Mayfair.

WITH thousands of middle-class homes being turned into white boxes every week, how on earth can English auctioneers sustain the market for middle-of-the-road Victorian pictures?