Auctioneers

A NEW record for Ming porcelain set by a king of Las Vegas provided the headline, but the real story of Christie’s anniversary series in Hong Kong was the rise and rise of Modern and Contemporary Asian art. This relatively new visitor to the global auction market has now eclipsed more traditional collecting disciplines as Christie’s biggest earner in Hong Kong.

Giving Scotland’s once-neglected art glass further standing in the saleroom, a good range of Monart and Ysasrt glass emerged at auction recently North of the Boarder.

Over 500 clients participated in Christie’s inaugural sale in Dubai last month at the Jumeirah Emirates Towers Hotel.

Madame Tussauds added Winston Churchill to their waxwork tableaux for the first time in 1908, but had produced another half dozen portraits before his death in 1965. The last of them was put up for sale by Dominic Winter on May 18.

The vendor of this handsome Chinese brush pot or bidong did not hold it in high regard. An heirloom from a grandfather who had spent some time in the Far East, the 6in (15.5cm) vessel had been relegated to the potting shed as a useful receptacle for garden tools and potting compost.

CHRISTIE’S May 17 sale of Partridge stock in New York went according to plan, with a hammer total of $12.5m (£6.65m).

The ownership of this c.1760 Irish mahogany side table was traced by the late Sir Charles Brett, a prominent Ulster attorney and leading Irish historian, to his descendent Charles Brett of Belfast (1752-1829). He was a wine merchant in Belfast and Bordeaux in the 1780s and his many business concerns included interests in the Belfast Glass Works, Distillery, Chamber of Commerce and Shipping.

BONHAMS have brokered a last-minute deal to save the unrivalled Jonathan Minns Collection of Industrial Archaeological Artefacts from being split up.

SOTHEBY’S have recorded a 30 per cent rise in first quarter revenues from 2005, with the 2006 total coming in at $96m.

“This was the earliest Cup Final programme I’ve ever seen,” said Graham Budd (15% buyer’s premium), referring to lot 747 in his sale on May 9-10 in association with Sotheby’s Olympia.

Edinburgh auctioneers Lyon & Turnbull unveiled two new appointments at the official opening of their new London office on Tuesday, March 9.

Hedge funds continue to stake a claim on big-ticket names

Pablo Picasso has become the ultimate luxury brand. On May 3 at Sotheby’s New York Picasso’s rare and iconic 1941 portrait, Dora Maar au chat, became the world’s second most expensive painting when it sold for $85m (£48.3m) to a mystery buyer in the room, widely presumed to be representing a Russian oligarch.

PHILLIPS de Pury & Company are to open a new London saleroom and hold a special Contemporary Art and Design auction on October 14 during the Frieze fair.

SOTHEBY’s have hit back at claims that investors are losing confidence in the art market despite the company’s biggest shareholder selling their entire stake.

It gives some idea as to how furniture connoisseurship has changed that the upholstered high-back chair pictured here could once have been accepted as an original furnishing from the bedroom of Mary Queen of Scots.

All Bank of England banknotes issued prior to the early 1800s are rare but the note, pictured here, dated 30 August 1705, is believed to be the oldest in private hands.

Long-time Kent auctioneer Mervyn Carey is to retire after more than four decades in the business. He held his last sale at the church hall in Tenterden last Wednesday.

A Bedford woman who was downsizing homes decided to enter this piece of family silver into her local auction house. It proved to be the stellar entry in W&H Peacock’s April 7 antiques sale when, after generating considerable pre-sale attention from the London silver trade, it far outstripped the saleroom’s unpublished expectations of around £3000-5000, selling to one of their number for £28,000 (plus 12.5% premium).

Essex centre to be environmentally friendly