Art and antiques news from 2007

Demand for contemporary art reached yet another new level of intensity in London’s auction rooms last week when Christie’s and Sotheby’s both posted record totals of nearly £75m for their June evening sales of contemporary works.

The date of 1623 puts this timekeeper firmly in the first years of production of what has come to be known as the English lantern clock.

It’s doubtful that the average person associates car boot sales with burlesque dancers, but that’s the combination you’ll find at the Art Car Boot Fair 2007 in London’s Brick Lane.

In 1914, Dame Laura Knight (1877-1970) was living in Cornwall and enjoying the most fertile period of her career.

COOPER Antique Fairs have a new venue for their latest antiques fair: The Royal Masonic School for Girls, Chorleywood, Hertfordshire.

On June 12, John Still, a private collector from Edinburgh, walked along a deserted Bond Street to arrive at the doors of the Fine Art Society at 6am, just a minute ahead of a second enthusiastic collector.

Partridge Fine Art lost £250,000 worth of jewellery to thieves at the Summer Olympia Fair. The thieves struck at the dealers’ stand on Sunday afternoon, when four items were taken. The police were informed immediately and Partridge spokesman Oscar Humphries told ATG that they were hopeful of recovering the gems.

Does Rowling have them rattled?

IT’S not often that eight sheets of paper bring out eight telephone bidders, but that was the case at Mallams’ sale in Oxford on June 8. Yet these were no ordinary scraps. They were, in fact, important pieces of architectural history.

In the UK there is a tendency to think of institutions as the natural permanent home for the best cultural artefacts. But American museums’ policy of deaccessioning means there can be second chances to buy stellar objects.

JAMES Podger is to close his Great Grooms antiques centre at Dorking and concentrate all his efforts and resources on consolidating his Great Grooms centre at Hungerford, Berkshire.

THE market for early English portrait miniatures received a sizeable fillip in London last week. The auction record was broken twice within the space of 24 hours with the sale of two iconic images of major figures in British history and this was backed up by a crop of other strong prices for top flight examples from the 16th and 17th centuries.

Just a month after their most successful sale ever, thanks to the consignment of an archive of Francis Bacon’s work, Woking auctioneers Ewbank’s have won another Bacon collection.

But supplies for repairs could still prove a problem

ONLINE auction giant eBay is banning cross-border sales of ivory on all their websites. The company announced that from the end of this month sellers will only be allowed to list ivory items for sale in their own country.

NEW auctioneers Aqueduct Auctions are holding their first sale on Saturday, June 16 at the Methodist Chapel, Froncysyllte, near Llangollen.

FOR more than a decade, Dorset saleroom Cottees have held biannual sales dedicated to Poole pottery. The most latest event had the sad distinction of being the first since the closure of the Poole Pottery just before Christmas.

The highlight of the Oriental sale conducted by Salisbury auctioneers Woolley & Wallis on May 22 was this underglaze copper-red Qianlong (1736-1795) mark and period moonflask standing 11in (27cm) high.

But move will fail to curtail smuggling of pre-1911 objects via Hong Kong

Not one but two international auction houses conducted sales series in Hong Kong in May.