Christie's

At just after 10am on July 19, William Porter – the first of four carefully chosen auctioneers – climbed the rostrum to a ripple of applause from an audience of two dozen staff and a dozen or so buyers. “Ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to Christie’s South Kensington and welcome to the Interiors sale.” Long pause. “For the last time,” he said. “Boo,” heckled a voice from the front.

Christie’s veteran Nic McElhatton believes the CSK model will be hard to replicate...

The closure of Christie's South Kensington has meant several firms are vying to gain a slice of the market in one of London's wealthiest area as well as draw the specialist staff who are moving on.

ATG's selection of quotes about the closure of Christie’s South Kensington...

An extraordinarily rich and varied crop of book sales have taken place this summer.

I grew up with Christie’s South Kensington. In late 1975, when I joined the fledgling four-year-old Antiques Trade Gazette, CSK was in its first year of existence.

Translated from a Paris version that had appeared earlier in that same year of 1535, an 8pp German newsletter giving an account of the execution of Thomas More sold for $11,500 (£9055) as part of the Eric Caren archive at Christie’s New York (25/20/12% buyer’s premium) on June 15.

A record-breaking Canaletto (1697-1768) drawing was the toast of the capital’s Old Masters drawings sales.

Written off by some as a dying area, the latest Old Master series in London defied the naysayers with encouraging results during its traditional ‘grand finale’ slot at the end of the London sales season.

Marc Lescarbot’s Nova Francia… of 1609 is an account of French settlements in North America and what we now think of as Nova Scotia and Canada. It predates the more famous first accounts of Champlain’s voyages and discoveries by three years.

A number of the French auction rooms have released their sales figures for the first half of the year, with Christie’s Paris operation taking the top slot.

In ATG No 2292, I noted as a record the £13,000 sale of a copy of Thomas Wright’s Original theory… of the universe… (1750), as part of the Christie’s April 26 sale of the Beltrame library.

West London‘s Chiswick Auctions is to open a new showroom in South Kensington manned by at least eight former Christie’s staff.

A pair of lions from the funerary monument of Charles V of France was the toast of Christie’s Exceptional sale in London on July 6.

The latest Old Master sales in London put in a solid performance with the overall total from last week’s auction series running at £115m (including premium) with one day sale still to take place at the time of going to press.

A moment of good old-fashioned saleroom drama emerged at Christie’s antiquities sale on July 5 when an Etruscan bronze mirror, estimated at £10,000-15,000, sold at £390,000 (plus 25/20/12% buyer’s premium). The buyer was a European institution.