Art and antiques news from 2015

With the death of ex-Antiques Roadshow presenter Hugh Scully at the age of 72, former Antiques Trade Gazette editor Ivan Macquisten looks back at what happened when he launched an online valuations business with the internet still in its infancy.

London’s growing importance as a hub for Modern design – boosted with the imminent return of sales at Sotheby’s – was underlined this month with records at Phillips in Mayfair.

After viewing events in London, Derbyshire and at the Antiques for Everyone fair in Birmingham, Fellows held their much-anticipated Blue John Sale in the Jewellery Quarter last week.

Lot number one in Rogers Jones’ latest sale provided both a world record result and a house record for the Welsh auctioneers.

A John Constable (1776-1837) oil sketch drew prolonged competition at the latest auction held at Exeter saleroom Bearnes Hampton & Littlewood.

The collection of medals awarded to Ernest Shackleton, the most decorated of the Polar explorers, excelled at a recent Christie’s South Kensington sale.

Stakeholders in the Italian art market will meet lawmakers this week in the hope of overturning legislation they say has hampered the country’s art market for a century.

Simon de Pury’s sale of the Lambert collection, trailed as a litmus test for high-end digital auctions, will now be conducted as a bricks and mortar event from the rostrum at King Street.

Bonhams have launched a new brand campaign centred on TV advertising. It is the first time that a major international auction house has advertised on TV.

This painting, found by John Nye of Bloomfield, New Jersey saleroom Nye & Company Auctions leaning up against a cellar wall, became one of the sleepers of the year on September 22.

Three years after Christie’s sold an earlier version for £20m, a second version of John Constable’s (1776-1837) The Lock is being offered at Sotheby’s Old Master & British Paintings Sale on December 9.

Stephan Ludwig and Ian Goldbart, creators of the group of businesses that includes Dreweatts, Baldwin’s and Mallett, are understood to have left parent company Stanley Gibbons.

The 1864 Ascot Cup, an impressive Victorian silver racing trophy by Garrard, led proceedings at the three-day sale of the Felix Dennis (1947-2014) collection. It sold at £67,000.

Sir Norman Rosenthal, one of the art world’s best known historians and curators, has described the trade side of the business as “a huge mechanism for preserving knowledge and value”.

The charity behind the vision to revamp the ‘vintage market’ end of Portobello Road has amended its designs in the face of opposition to a key proposal.

A Grand Tour cork model of the Temple of Zeus at Paestum has sold for £44,000 at Hampstead Auctions in north London.

An embossed brass belt buckle discovered in the back garden of an old English cottage is a reminder that the very first Australian side to tour England was one made up entirely of Aborigines.

Bimbo The Giant Clown was the beaming white face of Pelham Puppets for decades.

A new law giving online auction buyers additional consumer protection rights has been criticised for throwing dealers and auction houses into a legal grey area.

Timing is everything in sport and at auction. With New Zealand firm favourites to retain the Webb Ellis Cup on October 31, this is surely the moment to sell the jersey of a legendary All Black.