Art and antiques news from 2015

The 2015 NAVA Auctioneer of the Year competition takes place on September 23 at the Oxford Belfry.

A silver medal awarded to a lifeboatman who rescued sailors from a sinking ship in hurricane-force winds off the Kent coast in 1891 is to be sold at Canterbury Auction Galleries.

Yellow-ground wares from the Vincennes soft-paste porcelain workshops are great rarities.

Dutch online auction business Catawiki has raised $82m to build its business.

Exhibitors at British showground fairs must pay 20% VAT on pitch rentals, a tribunal has decided.

As dealers’ and buyers’ thoughts turn more to Pinot Grigio by the pool than art and antiques in August, only a few fairs rattle around to provide solace for those eager to earn or spend some money.

The Battle of Waterloo bicentenary has sparked a number of special auctions and dealer shows.

The antiques industry is being called on to take part in a consultation to reform the law governing the sale and ownership of antique firearms.

A photo album showing the former King Edward VIII giving Nazi salutes is on offer for the first time in 30 years, auctioneers Morgan Evans have revealed.

A London dealer has welcomed a new wide-ranging bill aimed at amending the law passed in the US last year banning the commercial trade in elephant ivory.

Opposition to controversial new laws governing cultural heritage in Germany is gathering pace. Auctioneers, dealers and collectors are backing a petition ‘preserving the right to privately collect’ and calling for German the government to rethink its proposals.

An art dealer from Cornwall has been sentenced after pleading guilty to seven counts of fraud relating to the sale of fake paintings, including works he claimed were by Alfred Wallis (1855-1942).

Following the closure of Bonhams toy department, two senior specialists have signed up with an ambitious Kent auction house.

The George Cross medal group awarded to Second World War heroine Violette Szabό has sold for £260,000 at London auctioneers Dix Noonan Webb.

North-eastern auctioneers Addisons are closing down after almost a century in business.

It was included in one of the Ashmolean Museum’s greatest bequests but this magnificent salt cellar was subsequently discovered to be Nazi loot. Recently restituted, it soared to £850,000 at auction.

This rare Irish provincial silver punch strainer took £14,000 at Lawrences’ latest sale in Crewkerne. Dated to c.1740-60, it is struck twice for Joseph Johns, one of only a handful of silversmiths working in Limerick in the middle of the 18th century.

Former deputy mayor of London, Victoria Borwick MP, has been elected as the new president of the British Antique Dealers’ Association (BADA).

Paris auction house Artcurial have formed a new subsidiary to conduct regular sales in Monaco.

Nigel Smith, the Harrogate-based valuer and auctioneer, has joined Morphets of Harrogate as a director after 16 years at Tennants running their Harrogate office.