Christie's

Highly lucrative totals, a record sale and a selection of unprecedented prices seen for individual artists – the Contemporary art market seemed to carry on regardless in London last week.

What has been a rich summer season of American book and manuscript sales culminated when Christie’s New York saw a record for any American book or historical document.

Christie’s are broadening their range of activity by launching their first online-only sale, Signature Cellars, an auction of fine and rare wines that will be open for bidding from August 6 to 20.

Lalique glass is one of those areas that has an international appeal with the best pieces selling strongly wherever they crop up.

In response to the exhibition of The Lock at the Royal Academy in 1824, The Morning Post wrote: “Mr Constable contributes a landscape composition which for depth, sparkling light, freshness and vigorous effect, exceeds any of his works.” Christie’s will offer the picture for sale as part of their Old Master & British Paintings evening sale on July 3.

The high point of interest in this spring’s antiquities sales was the Groppi Collection – a single-owner sale at Christie’s South Kensington of ancient Egyptian artefacts.

Soon after the gallery doors close at the BRUNEAF fair in Brussels on June 10 all eyes turn to Paris where Christie’s and Sotheby’s will hold major African and Oceanic sales on succeeding days.

A string of record prices for leading names in the Contemporary art market saw the amount of money raised in the latest New York auction series heading back to boom-time levels.

Setting a record any post-War work of art ever sold at auction, Mark Rothko’s (1903-1970) oil on canvas 'Orange, Red, Yellow' sold for $77.5m (£50m) at Christie’s Contemporary art evening sale on May 8.

LARGE new gallery spaces in Hong Kong look set to provide the battleground in the competition for private treaty sales between Sotheby’s and Christie’s.

CHRISTIE’S South Kensington has been forced to postpone their sale of the Raglan Collection at the 11th hour after a legal dispute over the estate resulted in a court injunction.

“THERE shall be one measure of wine throughout our whole realm, and one measure of ale and one measure of corn – namely, the London quart.”

David Hockney (b.1937) and the late Lucian Freud (1922-2011) have captured the public imagination at the moment.

IN what promises to be a massive test of the market for golfiana, Christie’s will auction the world’s most important private collection of golf art and memorabilia on May 30.

KNOCKED down at £19m, Francis Bacon’s Portrait of Henrietta Moraes was the top lot of London’s Contemporary art auction series last week by some margin.

PRICES for Henry Moore (1898-1986) have been rising consistently in recent years, but the performance of this large-scale bronze sculpture at auction last week dramatically lifted the artist to previously unseen levels.

Posters of St Moritz, Davos, Gstaad continue to dominate at ski sales in London.

Bidders in the room, on the phones and the internet were all in action last week to contest the 475-lot sale of the collection of Will Fisher, founder of London dealers Jamb, at Christie’s South Kensington.

PRIVATE treaty sales remain at the heart of Christie’s growth strategy, as the company’s latest statement underlines.

In clock collecting, the gold standard of original condition can be a difficult one to meet. Clocks almost always needing repairs or replacement parts to keep functioning day in, day out for centuries.