Europe

THE Chinese-born, French-based artists Zao Wou-Ki and Yan Pei Ming, who both featured among the successes at FIAC Paris, were also in demand at the sale staged by Cornette de St-Cyr (20.33/11.96% buyer’s premium) at Drouot Montaigne on the evening of October 11.

THE 36 sq.metre habitation module, pictured right, one of a series designed for a holiday village by Jean Manevel in 1965, was by far the biggest item on offer at the Pavillon des Antiquaires staged in Paris from September 20-28. It occupied one end of the Pavillon’s 200m marquee in the Tuileries Gardens, and was sold by Jousse Entreprise to a Paris private buyer for €50,000 (£35,000).

Fontainebleau auctioneer Jean-Pierre Osenat, 57, has replaced ArtCurial’s Hervé Poulain as head of France’s auctioneers’ association, the Syndicat National des Maisons de Ventes Volontaires (SYMEV).

FOLLOWING an evening charity opening this Wednesday the 38th Irish Antique Dealers Fair runs in the main hall of the Royal Dublin Society, Ballsbridge, Dublin 4 from October 2 to 5.

Spink will hold their first ever sale in Paris on November 17 when they offer the La Fayette collection of stamps. Following a seven-month acceptance process, Spink have now joined the select band of outside auctioneers licensed to sell in the French capital.

ARGUABLY the most apt backdrop for an art fair anywhere in the world is the Renaissance city of Florence, and the city can be seen at its best at this time of year when, from September 26 to October 5, the 23rd Florence Biennale takes place at the Palazzo Corsini on the Arno.

The energetic organisers of ART COLOGNE, Koelnmesse, have beefed up their team with the appointment last week of Gérard Andrew Goodrow, 39, as fair director, a new post. He should be happily settled in by the end of October when the next ART COLOGNE opens.

Online auctioneer eBay will create up to 800 new jobs in Dublin as they expand their European operations. The San Francisco-based company will locate the European headquarters for their PayPal Internet payment unit in west Dublin and will also open a second European customer support centre.

Deauville Auction’s saleroom success has incited other firms to try out the Normandy resort as a sales venue, something Augier is happy with insofar as they “bring in extra activity, which is good for the town” – and providing, he adds pointedly, that “they are quality sales”.

Exhibitors at the 2003 Monaco Biennale are invariably reluctant to go into detail about sales and, of course, a lot of business is done in the weeks and months after the fair as a result of contacts made. But it was clear that not all participants at this year’s Biennale (August 1-17) had enjoyed the same level of activity.

Laure de Beauvau-Craon has announced that she will step down as chief executive of Sotheby’s France at the end of the year. She has held the post since 1991 and will be remembered for successfully lobbying the European Commission to bring about the abolition of the domestic auction monopoly of France’s commissaires-priseurs.

Prices at auction for works by Basil Blackshaw have been slowly creeping up over the past few years and Northern Ireland’s most famous living artist now enjoys international acclaim.

WELL-known Dutch Oriental specialists Vanderven & Vanderven are stalwarts of Maastricht, Basel Cultura and the Grosvenor House fairs, but their taste for international events has been sharpened of late.

MADRID organisers IFEMA stage what is arguably Spain’s top fair, Feriarte, at the Juan Carlos I Exhibition Centre in the Spanish capital from November 22 to 30.

IRELAND: IRISH pictures for many years flew off the rostrum with both a strong private market in Ireland and the money of Irish-Americans to fuel the enthusiasm. Irish art still, of course, sells, but there is no doubt that collectors are becoming more selective.

FRANCE: The 162-lot Piasa (17.94/11.96% buyer’s premium) furniture sale on June 25 was 70 per cent sold by lot and brought €1.8m (£1.24m) hammer, with a three-drawered Louis XVI citronwood-veneered bureau plat, with painted metal decoration of arabesques and blue and white medallions, evocative of the work of Pierre Macret (active 1756-85), selling for €340,000 (£234,000) – helped by its leather top with crowned N and imperial corner eagles.

FRANCE: ON July 4 Chayette-Cheval (17.94% buyer’s premium) devoted an entire sale to clocks, watches and related items, achieving a hammer total of €571,000 (£394,000).

THE word from Ireland is that autumn could be hard work – judging by results at the antiques fair staged as part of the Royal Dublin Society Horse Show from August 6 to 10. The Horse Show is a prime event in the city’s social calendar and the idea of the antiques fair – organised in the past by veteran Irish promoter Louis O’ Sullivan but this year by the RDS itself – is to put the 25 exhibitors in a potentially profitable ambience.

The Collection of Louis Vivien, a Paris bookseller who opened his shop in Rue des Ecoles in 1905, swiftly specialising in the aeronautical world after attending the inaugural Salon Aéronautique of 1908, provided Tajan (20.33% buyer’s premium) with yet another new sale theme – Aviation – on June 21.

£36,000 private bid on cabinet shows underlying market strength: BRITISH auctioneers have long looked enviously across the Irish Sea where there still seems a wealth of high-quality furniture coming onto the market from private sources to be welcomed not merely by the trade but also by confident and well-heeled private bidders who have been the dominant force these past ten years and more.