Conservationist thinking . . .

CHARLES Mynors: "There are now around 500,000 listed buildings in England, which is enough at the present rate of demolition to last 5,000 years."
Conservationist lawyer. (There are also 9,000 conservation areas which contain a million buildings.)

MICHAEL Heseltine: "I would like another chance to put right things I got wrong."
Former UK Government minister in charge of listed buildings.

FIONA Reynolds: "It's not all doom and gloom."
Director General of the National Trust.

GRIFF Rhys-Jones: "I long for some sort of institution to actively promote new thinking about reuse."
Comic presenter of TV's Restoration series.

JOHN Yates: "What scares me? Building owners consigning their history to the skip."
Chairman of Institute of Historic Building Conservation.

MALCOLM Airs: "In ten years, the Heritage Lottery Fund has spent £3 billion on 15,000 projects."
Professor of Conservation, Oxford University.

JOHN Preston: "Five million of the 25 million buildings in England pre-date 1919. Twenty-five per cent of 645,000 planning applications had conservation implications."
Trustee COTAC, chairman IHBC education.

DONOVAN Rypkema: "The US National Register of Historic Places covers 1.2 million buildings . . . with each building having almost no protection. In 30 years of historic tax credits nearly $37 billion has been invested in 34,000 historic US buildings."
Principal of PlaceEconomics USA

DAVID Lambert: "Historic parks and gardens are latecomers to the feast of heritage legislation and protection. It was the storms of 1987 that really increased the levels of funding."
Parks Agency and Garden History Society.

ADAM Wilkinson: "SAVE's own view on some of the buildings it originally campaigned against, such as the Gateshead car park, have been reversed. The greatest threat to our heritage is Ruth Kelly's Housing Market Renewal Initiative . . . destruction of 57,000 homes, the majority pre-1919."
Secretary SAVE Britain's Heritage

Quotes taken from The Journal of Architectural Conservation published by Donhead 2006.

The Frits Philips sale in Eindhoven

Lot 617: Gilt iron armillary, 1786, with auxiliary sphere - what is that about? - and painted hour ring, 131cm high. Sold €19,200 (est €4k)
Lot 883: Relief moulded terracotta brick, 12cm by 14cm by 5cm, depicting a rampant boar, probably German 16thC. Sold €480 (est €300)
Lot 33: Top tile lot: Nine Dutch polychrome tulip tiles, c1620-1650. Sold €11,400 (est €1k).
Lot 470: A 16th century Flemish tondo of yellow and grisaille stained glass, now a hanger, picturing Christ on the path to Calvary, 22cm dia, which sold for €16,800 (est €3k).
Lot 597: Jan Pieter van Bauerscheit the elder (1668-1728), Dutch carved gritstone putto holding a seal with a dog, 90cm high, the plinth carved with the letters PVB J F. Sold €20,400 (est €8k)
Lot 601: Carved stone group of Pan and Syrinx, 19thC, on gritstone pedestal, 2.6m high overall. Sold €30k (est €40k). Mythology: In Arcadia, Pan chased Syrinx who to evade cpature was transformed into reeds from which Pan made his pan pipes
Lot 589: Two French steel wine bottle racks, 164cm high 100cm wide 56cm deep. Sold €2,400 (est €2k)
Photos: Sotheby's


Eindhoven, North Brabant, Holland - THE death aged 101 of Frits Philips, one time head of electrical giant Philips NV, resulted in a sale by Sotheby's held on 4 December 2006. Anton and Gerald Philips started making light bulbs in Eindhoven in 1895. PSV Eindhoven, the works sports union, Philips Sports Vereniging, was founded in 1913 to celebrate the centenary of the defeat of the French in the Napoleonic wars, and is now known for its professional football club, of which Frits was a keen fan. The club is keeping his stadium seat empty as a memorial. In 1966 Frits built the Evoluon, where this auction sale was held, as a flying saucer shaped science museum gifted to the people of Eindhoven. During the war he helped Jews evade the Nazis and was put in a concentration camp for four months because of a strike at the Philips factory. The Sotheby's sale, which totaled €5.7m (£3.8m $7.3m) was of items collected by Frits and his father Anton Philips.

Sotheby's Frits sale results