Exhibitions

ALTHOUGH Derwent Lees (1885-1931) is recorded in reference books, such as the Handbook of Modern British Painting and Print-making 1900-1990, published by Ashgate, he is not that well known outside specialist trade circles.

WILTSHIRE ceramics specialist Andrew Dando has been mounting annual selling exhibitions for more than a decade and the tradition goes on in 2004.

“COINS transmit the image of a ruler far more widely than any other medium available before photography.” Thus the blurb trumpeting the exhibition in the British Museum of portraits on coins.

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.

KENSINGTON ceramics dealer Garry Atkins holds his traditional annual exhibition of English pottery at his gallery at 107 Kensington Church Street, London W8 from March 9 to 20. There are 47 specially chosen items in the catalogue, which is free to those who attend the show or £8 by post.

In commercial terms ecclesiastical silver is not the strongest area of the market but there is no doubting its social and historical interest, especially when it has retained its links to the church for which it was made.

THIS year is the centenary of the foundation of the Georg Jensen silversmith workshop in Copenhagen, and to mark the anniversary the international Jensen specialists The Silver Fund hold an exhibition devoted to the work of one of the most renowned designers of the Jensen firm, Henning Koppel (1918-1981).

FRANCE: THE centenary of the Wiener Werkstätte, founded by Josef Hoffmann and Koloman Moser in 1903, was commemorated in Vienna with various museum and gallery exhibitions, and two specialist auctions at the city’s main auction houses – the Dorotheum and Wiener Kunst.

FOR their third biennial exhibition, Blumka Gallery of New York and Kunsthandlung Julius Böhler of Munich join forces for a truly stunning collection of recent acquisitions at Blumka’s premises at 209 East 72nd Street.

CAN a mere movie affect the antiques market? The answer would appear to be yes, at least in New York where, since the release of The Last Samurai, starring Tom Cruise, interest in the ancient Japanese weapons of the Samurai has soared with a significant number of new collectors entering the field declaring they have been inspired by the film.

DECANTERS of all types from the 18th century to the present are the subject of an exhibition running at the Broadfield House Glass Museum, Dudley, until April 18 next year.

BUCKINGHAM Palace will host an extensive exhibition next year entitled George III and Queen Charlotte: Patronage, Collecting and Court Taste. Opening on March 26 in The Queen’s Gallery, it will feature 500 objects, drawn entirely from the Royal Collection and constituting what is thought to be one of the largest and finest groups of Georgian material ever assembled.

A REMINDER that there is still some time to catch the 18 special exhibitions mounted by members of The Cotswolds Antique Dealers Association as part of their annual exhibitions fortnight, and this year to celebrate the association’s 25th anniversary. The shows are scheduled to close on October 25, but I am sure there will still be some exhibition items on sale after that date.

CLOSING this Saturday (October 18) and not to be missed, is an exhibition of photographs by Michael Cooper at the Atlas Gallery, 49 Dorset Street, London W1. One of the great archives of 1960s photography, this show has prompted the Independent on Sunday to brand the snapper as “The Swinging Sixties’ poet of the lens”. Lennon, Magritte, Warhol, Burroughs, the Rolling Stones, Twiggy, and Hockney are all featured among the 37 photos priced from £800 to £6000.

What a novel idea Kent dealer Neville Pundole has come up with for his current exhibition at the Neville Pundole Gallery, The Friary, Canterbury.

THREE other Stow-on-the-Wold members are also holding selling exhibitions from October 11 to 25 and a contrasting trio they are. Baggott Church Street hosts A Sense of Proportion which displays some specially chosen pieces of period furniture commissioned by the middle classes to furnish their townhouses and country manors.

Rubbing shoulders with racing stables, vineyards and Spanish holiday homes at the ExCeL exhibition centre on September 19-21 were dealers John Bly and Wakelin & Linfield, LAPADA and toy auctioneers Vectis. But an opportunity missed was the general consensus of the event among a dozen or so representatives from the trade who took part in the first Leisure & Alternative Investment Show.

YOU might well detect a distinct whiff of testosterone in the air around Mayfair’s Bruton Street later this month when a selling exhibition Gentleman’s Relish: 200 Years of Machismo runs at the Shapero Gallery at No. 24 from September 24 to October 17.

Exhibitors at the 2003 Monaco Biennale are invariably reluctant to go into detail about sales and, of course, a lot of business is done in the weeks and months after the fair as a result of contacts made. But it was clear that not all participants at this year’s Biennale (August 1-17) had enjoyed the same level of activity.

LINCOLNSHIRE-based Grosvenor Exhibitions are professional organisers in a number of fields, not just antiques, but they are upping their antiques profile with a new Midlands fair scheduled for December.