Dealers

LONDON: THE trade are being warned about credit card cloning after several incidents in London in the past few months. In mid-January, a King’s Road gallery sold a French 19th Century bronze figure to a customer, and was paid with a credit card which, though authorised at the time, now appears to have been fraudulent.

FRANCE: A remarkable 21 new dealers are joining this year’s 21st Biennale des Antiquaires, which will be held at the Carrousel du Louvre, in Paris from September 20 to 29.

IN 1528 Albrecht Dürer wrote: “There lives no man upon earth who can give a final judgement upon what the most beautiful shape of a man may be; God only knows that.” As five exhibitions highlight, artists love to expose all the inconsistency of the human form, be it scrawny or rotund.

NOTED St. James’s Asian specialists Rossi and Rossi leave their Jermyn Street showrooms for New York this month for an exciting show which runs until March 26 at the galleries of Dickinson Roundell, 19 East 66th Street.

Mallet, one of London’s most famous and venerable antiques dealerships, are opening prestigious new permanent galleries on New York’s Upper East Side.

LONDON: MAYFAIR dealers Partridge have seen pre-tax profits drop by 90 per cent in what chairman John Partridge has dubbed “the most difficult and uncertain market conditions, for this company, that I have experienced in my 43 years as chairman”.

THE conventions of attribution for paintings are safe after a High Court judge ruled in favour of Mayfair art dealers Agnew’s in a £1.5m claim by a disgruntled customer.

THE Staithes Group, the band of artists who made the North Yorkshire fishing village their home before some moved to the South West and Newlyn, are the subject of an impressive exhibition put together by Cumbrian dealer Peter Haworth (Tel: 015395 62352).

The sudden death of David Wolfers, the ‘captain’ of the New Grafton Gallery (49 Church Road, Barnes, SW13 9HH. Tel: 020 8748 8850) in late December 2001, aged 84, robbed the art world of one of its charismatic characters.

Echoes of the Kent County Council Bill can be discerned in changes announced to the VAT secondhand margin scheme (notice 718). Dealers who use a system called Global Accounting to calculate VAT on profit margins will have to keep a record of the names and addresses of sellers on purchase invoices – a main requirement of the Kent Bill – when the changes come into force on July 31 this year.

Tea-drinking first took off in the West in the late 17th century and in its wake came a whole host of paraphernalia associated with the consumption and storage of the beverage.

British Art Market Federation lobbying has persuaded the Department of Trade and Industry to provide grants for 13 LAPADA members to exhibit at a Chicago antiques fair.

ELEVEN top dealers make their debut at this summer’s Grosvenor House Art and Antiques Fair and it is clear that the organisers of our most prestigious event have taken the opportunity to beef up their fine art quota.

The conviction of New York antiquities dealer Frederick Schultz on charges of conspiracy and trading in stolen and smuggled artefacts has sent shockwaves through the trade.

THE judgment in the £1.5m claim against Mayfair art dealers Agnew’s could have important repercussions for the rules and conventions on attribution in UK art sales.

UK: Thornhill Galleries are a 120-year-old British company that specialise in architectural antique interior design. They make panelled rooms on commission in antique pine and seasoned hardwood and carry a wide stock of period fireplaces and accessories, garden statuary and other architectural features.

Exhibitions outside London: Specialist print dealer Elizabeth Harvey-Lee (1 West Cottage, Middle Aston Road, North Aston, Oxon OX25 5QB. Tel: 01869 34 7164) has built up an impressive reputation for producing informative, well-illustrated stock catalogues.

LAST year’s United States class action against Sotheby’s and Christie’s over price fixing may now be followed by similar action in the UK. Dealers who missed out on the $512m compensation paid to settle the claims over US auctions will meet in London this week to plan a similar legal challenge in Britain.

MAYFAIR art dealers Agnew’s are hotly contesting claims for a £1.5m refund over an Old Master which is at the centre of a dispute over who painted it.

LONDON: Three dealers exhibiting at the Spring Fine Art and Antiques Fair at Olympia in West London will hold a concurrent joint exhibition just two minutes’ walk away from the West London exhibition complex, with the object of pulling in the public and any decorators who are in town.