AS we noted in our February 19 Leader, the art and antiques trade is surprisingly buoyant and, at present, its mood is positive. Evidence from the first fairs and auctions of the year supports our assessment.
When I visited the Marriott Hotel, Grosvenor Square, W1, for the opening event of the London year, the Mayfair Fair, I was greeted with the heartening news that one of the items featured in my January 1 preview had sold off the page and that there had been six enquiries about it before the fair opened. This was the rare Paul Storr silver cheese-toasting dish with Mary Cooke.
The Art Nouveau and Deco glass specialists M & D Moir sold a complete shelf-full to one regular client and another Art Deco dealer, Jeroen Markies, took £1,450 for a Swiss Jaeger- LeCoultre brass and glass clock (Fig 3) dating from the 1950s.
On the opening day of the Decorative Fair in Battersea, Stuart Atkinson of Fontaine, a Ledbury-based dealer, reported: ‘Overall, it has been pretty good. We’ve had such a high footfall and one private customer purchased every painting on our stand—all 43 of them.’
Large and traditional items also did well at this event. Vagabond Antiques of Fittleworth, West Sussex, for instance, parted with a collection of 18th-century staddle stones priced at £3,500 to a new customer; a life-sized 18th-century carved stone figure of Apollo on its original plinth (Fig 1), ticketed at £32,000; an 18th–century Italian painted chest of drawers at £4,600; a reclining leather Victorian armchair; several upholstery items; and ‘a really nice George III period lacquered chinoiserie chest at £5,500’.
Diese Geschichte stammt aus der March 04, 2020-Ausgabe von Country Life UK.
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Save our family farms
IT Tremains to be seen whether the Government will listen to the more than 20,000 farming people who thronged Whitehall in central London on November 19 to protest against changes to inheritance tax that could destroy countless family farms, but the impact of the good-hearted, sombre crowds was immediate and positive.
A very good dog
THE Spanish Pointer (1766–68) by Stubbs, a landmark painting in that it is the artist’s first depiction of a dog, has only been exhibited once in the 250 years since it was painted.
The great astral sneeze
Aurora Borealis, linked to celestial reindeer, firefoxes and assassinations, is one of Nature's most mesmerising, if fickle displays and has made headlines this year. Harry Pearson finds out why
'What a good boy am I'
We think of them as the stuff of childhood, but nursery rhymes such as Little Jack Horner tell tales of decidedly adult carryings-on, discovers Ian Morton
Forever a chorister
The music-and way of living-of the cabaret performer Kit Hesketh-Harvey was rooted in his upbringing as a cathedral chorister, as his sister, Sarah Sands, discovered after his death
Best of British
In this collection of short (5,000-6,000-word) pen portraits, writes the author, 'I wanted to present a number of \"Great British Commanders\" as individuals; not because I am a devotee of the \"great man, or woman, school of history\", but simply because the task is interesting.' It is, and so are Michael Clarke's choices.
Old habits die hard
Once an antique dealer, always an antique dealer, even well into retirement age, as a crop of interesting sales past and future proves
It takes the biscuit
Biscuit tins, with their whimsical shapes and delightful motifs, spark nostalgic memories of grandmother's sweet tea, but they are a remarkably recent invention. Matthew Dennison pays tribute to the ingenious Victorians who devised them
It's always darkest before the dawn
After witnessing a particularly lacklustre and insipid dawn on a leaden November day, John Lewis-Stempel takes solace in the fleeting appearance of a rare black fox and a kestrel in hot pursuit of a pipistrelle bat
Tarrying in the mulberry shade
On a visit to the Gainsborough Museum in Sudbury, Suffolk, in August, I lost my husband for half an hour and began to get nervous. Fortunately, an attendant had spotted him vanishing under the cloak of the old mulberry tree in the garden.
