Sotheby's

Sotheby’s wait for a change of climate to see prices grow after statuary sale falters: Sotheby's specialist-in-charge of the Sussex garden statuary sales, Rupert van der Werff, believes the most reliable barometer for this area is the housing market. Certainly the well-publicised recession in that overheated area has had a hugely detrimental effect on statuary.

Illustrated with 117 detailed watercolours, an account of the different species of Agaric mushrooms growing in the Vienna region, complete with notes on their suitability for eating, was one of two mycological manuscripts in the natural history section of the Sotheby’s sale of May 7 (19.5/10% buyer's premium).

AN ARRAY of elegant objects sold mostly within estimates at the Celebration of the English Country House auction at Sotheby’s New York (20/12% buyer’s premium) on April 30 and May 1.

IN the week that former chairman Alfred Taubman was finally released from jail, Sotheby’s announced first quarter total revenues of $47.6m, 4.8 per cent up on the same period last year.

THERE was a collective sigh of relief in the New York salerooms last week when, after a long period of uncertainty following the war in Iraq and turmoil in the stockmarkets, both Sotheby’s and Christie’s held impressive Part I Impressionist and Modern sales. Any fears that anti-French feeling would spill over in the salerooms proved unfounded after French artists took the top honours at both houses.

Getting Sotheby’s Olympia’s (20/12% buyer’s premium) 288-lot April 2 sale of British and European Ceramics off to a brisk start was a well received section devoted to early Italian maiolica, Dutch Delft and other tin-glazed earthenwares.

A NUMBER of dealers and collectors have contacted the Antiques Trade Gazette about notifications they have received concerning the settlement of claims relating to the Sotheby’s and Christie’s collusion case.

A JUNE 3 New York court hearing will rule whether Sotheby’s and Christie’s should pay $40m compensation to clients who bought and sold at their auctions outside the US during the 1990s.

“AS extreme as always with focused bidding on the key lots,” was Victorian specialist Grant Ford’s frank description of the selective response to Sotheby’s (20/12% buyer’s premium) mid-season British Sale at Bond Street.

Provenance, Provenance Provenance, this was the key to the runaway success of Sotheby’s 539-lot, £1.66m sale of items formerly owned by the famous engineer James Watt and his son James Watt Junior that had been carefully passed down through his family.

The classic car market has received a twin injection of interest, with Sotheby’s seeming set to return to the fray and a new face entering the Olympia arena. H&H Classic Auctions of Warrington have established a global reputation with their sales at Buxton, in Derbyshire’s Peak District. Riding high on the success of a recent European record for a Mercedes Benz 300SL (£174,000), they are now looking to expand into London.

The Oriental glazes of the Midlands Arts and Crafts pottery known as Ruskinware have proved remarkably popular in the past year, as the disposal of the Wade collection at Sotheby’s and the Birkett Collection at Bonhams took prices in this market to unprecedented levels.

SOTHEBY’S have registered a 12 per cent rise in turnover on the fourth quarter of last year, but net losses for the year have climbed considerably thanks to extraordinary costs. Three quarters of these costs relate to anti-trust settlements.

Christie’s and Sotheby’s have each agreed to pay $20m (£13m) to clients who bought and sold antiques at auctions held outside America.

Decorative arts from 1870s Gothic Revival to 1960s Murano glass and everything in between is on offer at Sotheby’s Olympia this month. Their sizeable gathering of over 230 lots, which goes under the hammer on February 27, takes in examples of all the major design movements of the 20th century (and the latter end of the 19th): Art Nouveau, Arts & Crafts, Wiener Werkstätte, Deco and Modernism.

SOTHEBY’S have announced that they have given up trying to find a buyer for the controlling stake of disgraced former chairman A. Alfred Taubman.

SOTHEBY’S have started a new staff review and admit that further redundancies are likely.

The first furniture sale of the year at Sotheby’s Olympia (20/12% buyer’s premium) was a 272-lot gathering on January 14 which saw two-thirds of the contents change hands.

It was a definite case of first the bad news, then the good news at the February round of Impressionist, Modern and Contemporary sales in London. While Impressionist and Modern works failed to sparkle, there was a significant surge in interest for the Contemporary.

Sotheby’s have dramatically scaled back their ambitious but costly Internet operation, announcing an end to all separate online auctions by early May.