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The celebrity factor also applies to the auction scene and there are two examples on Sunday, August 19, when the assorted collections of Lisa Ho and Peter and Divonne Holmes a Court will be sold by Mossgreen in Sydney. Both sales will take place at the Byron Kennedy Hall in the Entertainment Quarter at Fox Studios, a location chosen partly because it's in Sydney's social heartland and partly because there's plenty of parking.
The National Gallery of Australia has been embroiled in a drama over the alleged trafficking of artefacts and antiquities. Subhash Kapoor, 63, an American citizen who deals in Indian artefacts and owns two galleries in Manhattan, is being held in prison in Tamil Nadu, southern India, accused of trafficking antiques and antiquities.
New Zealand auctioneer W. T. Macalister Auctions of will sell the R. Geoffrey Bell Collection of about 160 lots of porcelain, silver and jewellery and 48 paintings in Christchurch on 8 August 2012. Geoffrey Bell was the last Managing Director of Christchurch’s best known retailer of fine ceramics, John Bates & Co.
Melbourne businessman Hugh Morgan appears to have obtained the all-clear to sell his large and valuable stamp collection overseas. Mr Morgan is expected to raise more than £3 million ($4.5 million) from the sale. His father William began building the collection in the early 1960s and it is rich in early 20th-century specimens. The stamps will be auctioned at Spink & Son in London on November 13 and 14
Scottish-born antiques dealer Gordon Brown is the new host of the ABC's Auction Room, replacing actor William McInnes.Brown is well known to ABC viewers from his on-camera role on the ABC show Collectors. Auction Room will see him touring auctions around the country to tell the stories of sellers and their wares. McInnes has pulled out of the second series of the show because of commitments elsewhere.
Few Aboriginal people - the Jaburrara, Martuthunira, and Ngarluma - who lived in the Nickol Bay area of Western Australia in the 1870s are likely to have been served tea on a silver salver. But an Aboriginal connection to a salver which is coming up in Bonhams' rooms in Chester on September 4 heightens its interest to prospective Australian collectors.
The Annual Kirkoswold Silver Study Day, presented by Jolyon Warwick James, will be held on Tuesday 16th October in Warrawee on Sydney’s North Shore from 9.30 am to approximately 6.00 pm. It is small, friendly and informative for all levels of knowledge and experience and takes place in a splendid large private mansion ideally suited to such an occasion. This is the sixth year the event has been held.
Once a year in early July, Christies in King Street, London, hold “The Exceptional Sale”, usually with around 50 selected lots of furniture, decorative and fine arts with few estimates below six figures. The highlight of last year, 2011, was the George II chandelier which sold for £5.75 million (including buyer’s premium). Though made for the Hanoverian English King (to a design by William Kent) it was not English made, but by Behrens of Hanover in 1736. In any case a world record price for a piece of silver.
A rainbow is said to have a pot of gold at its end. Was London in June (and a little beyond), the end of a rainbow for the Australian going over to buy? Auctions hold back much of their best stock for a London summer showing, there are three excellent fairs held and numerous exceptional exhibitions.
At the 40th Olympia International Fine Art & Antiques fair in London, which finsihed on 17 June 2012, John Hawkins, exhibiting with his daughter Emma, as Hawkins & Hawkins of Tasmania and Scotland, sold the 32 piece toilet service commissioned in 1708 by the father of the Duchess of Norfolk, Sir Nicholas Shireburne of Stonyhurst in Lancashire, for her marriage to the Duke of Norfolk.
A 19th century French exhibition cabinet sold for $192,000 or more than three times its lower estimate at the sale of Fine Furniture, Decorative And Asian Art held by Bonhams in Sydney on May 27.
The listing of a Nicky Winmar jumper for sale at Sotheby's with a cool $100,00-$200,000 estimate put the staggering value of sports memorabilia in the spotlight. From football bedlinen to lunch boxes, the market for AFL merchandise alone has grown to an annual $25 million (up $1 million in a year) while the less visible, but much pricier football memorabilia market is worth $10 million a year, and, according to AFL valuer Rick Milne, has risen 10 per cent annually for a decade.
A small telephone directory sized catalogue proclaimed the sale - “A Collection from Thomas Hamel Interiors and Martyn Cook Antiques”, the vendors being two of Australia’s pre-eminent figures in their fields.
A French flag flying over Chinese territory appears to have flagged a further - unlikely – gain for the Chinese market .
At their Fine Furniture, Decorative Arts & Asian Art auction in Sydney on Sunday May 27, Bonhams will offer a side cabinet (meuble à hauteur d'appui) by the French cabinetmaker and craftsman, Louis-Auguste-Alfred Beurdeley (1808-1882).
Lot 68 of Shapiro Auctions on 9th May was an innocent looking Australian fiddle pattern dessert spoon by Alexander Dick. The marks were the more common for Dick – the pseudo London marks for 1800 (“date letter ”E”) rather than the rarer Castle (Edinburgh?) mark and date letter D etc.
The "Hayball Cabinet", the gold medal award winning cabinet from the Great Exhibition of 1851, held in Crystal Palace London, and auctioned by Elder Fine Art in Adelaide on 6 May 2012, (lot 175) did not reach its reserve during the auction and was sold after the auction to the Stokes Collection, based in Mt Macedon, Victoria
Some clever detective work by Elder Fine Art of Adelaide has resulted in the identification of an ornate mid-Victorian prize winning cabinet from the Great Exhibition of 1851, held in Crystal Palace London, to be offered in their sale of 6 May 2012.
For the past 10 years, an old shed full of farm machinery at Diggers Rest has been the resting place for 80 excellent pieces of Royal Worcester, other fine china and paintings packed away in boxes.
Magnificent furnishings originally from the prestigious Burlington Place London residence of King Edward VII’s physician Dr Percy Longhurst will be the highlight of Ainger’s first special sale for 2012.