Japanese Works of Art

This tiny ivory netsuke of a rat was the major suprise of a recent auction in the Cotswolds.

Briefly owned by Louis XVI, who intended them for the Louvre, this 13in (33.5cm) high pair of fine gilt-bronze-mounted kakiemon porcelain and Egyptian porphyry brûle parfums sold for £1.65m at Sotheby’s in London this week.

In a series of sales to be spread over the coming years, Cologne auctioneers Lempertz are selling netsuke from the Kolodotschko collection.

A Derby porcelain plaque and two Japanese plates have been returned by Surrey Police to two stately homes after they were recognised from an alert in Antiques Trade Gazette

An exceptional piece of 17th century Japanese export lacquer with a provenance to match has produced the highest auction price in France this year when it was sold to the Rijksmuseum for a hammer price of €5.9m (£5.26m).

This 1½in (3.5cm) Japanese ivory okimono stole the show at Tamylns’ in Bridgwater, Somerset when it sold to a telephone bidder for £13,000.

This intricate ivory okimono group from c.1880 took £25,000 at the most recent sale held by Nicholson’s of Fernhurst.

Liverpool World Museum’s Japanese holdings have been given a significant boost by the donation of 128 netsuke. The gift represents around half the collection of the late Jonas G Gadelius donated by his widow Gabita.

The highlight of the Asia week series of auctions put on by the major salerooms was an impressive early Japanese wood sculpture of Buddha. It set a new auction high for a Japanese work of art when it was hammered down to the Japanese company Mitsukoshi Co Ltd for $12.8m (£6.7m) plus premium in Christie’s sale of Japanese and Korean art on March 18.

A FRAUDSTER has tricked a US auction house into handing over a valuable Japanese artwork by posing as the representative of the buyer, an English dealer. It is thought they targeted the piece after realising that it was worth a great deal more than it sold for.

Bonhams are to take advantage of Sotheby’s decision to end Japanese sales by recruiting their top specialist and consultant.

It was catalogued simply as “a carved and signed ivory netsuke modeled as a dragon” and estimated at just £200-300, but this 11/2in (4.5cm) netsuke shot to £41,000 (plus 15 per cent premium) at Paul Beighton of Thurcroft, near Rotherham on February 26. Why? The reason was twofold.

Dreweatt Neate (Buyer's premium: 17.5 per cent)SOMETIMES one could be forgiven for thinking that the words ‘Oriental work of art sleeper’, as, for instance, ‘English middle order collapse’ don’t require spaces between them and that, German-style, they are all one word.

A local estate was the source of some fine Meiji ivories sold by Cheshire auctioneers Frank Marshall (15% buyer’s premium) of Knutsford on January 11.

David Lay, Penzance. January 20 & 21. Buyer’s premium: 15 per cent THERE were rather fewer lots than usual at Cornwall but the 720 on offer were true to tradition; a high take up (around 90 per cent), plenty of two- and three-figure bids on collectables and ceramics, standard furniture creeping into four figures, and one lot taking off.