International

December is one of two key periods in the French calendar when the auction houses concentrate their sales of Asian art. Pictured here is a selection of highlights and unusual pieces coming up for sale this month in the Paris rooms.

The influx of Asian art buyers that accompanies the Asian Art in London initiative also encourages activity across the Irish Sea. Both Adam’s (20% buyer’s premium) in Dublin, for the first time, and Sheppards (20% buyer’s premium) in Durrow held designated sales on November 3 and November 11 respectively.

A trip to France before Christmas to buy unusual gifts is always a good plan. Here are three antiques and vintage brocantes to visit: two well-known weeklies in Paris and a biannual event in Bordeaux.

Raising around $11m including premiums, a November 15-17 comics and comic art sale held by Heritage Auctions (20% buyer’s premium) in Dallas included many of the usual super-hero star turns – but this time the big seller was something rather different.

ATG’s calendar of book auctions taking place in the UK and Ireland from December 3-15, 2018.

The three volumes noted here are English language highlights of a separately catalogued, 380-lot, single-owner collection in the October 30-November 1 series of sales held by Reiss & Sohn (18% buyer’s premium) that was offered under the title Wirtschaft und Staat – or Economy and State.

Italy, like many European countries whose economies were ravaged during the war, had to face the challenge of picking itself up and starting afresh once hostilities were over.

The jacket of the 1904 first of Jack London’s The Sea-Wolf shown right is quite obviously in a sorry state – falling apart and with sizeable sections missing all round. It is, however, a jacket previously known only by rumour or talk of ‘one other copy thought to exist’.

It is the quirky designs of husband-and-wife team François-Xavier and Claude Lalanne that populate the top echelons of so much French design in the salerooms these days.

ATG’s calendar of book auctions taking place in the UK and Ireland from November 27-December 7, 2018.

Admirers of American neoclassical decorative arts have been treated to a wealth of exhibitions in recent years, and now even more is available to discover and acquire.

The French dealer François Laffanour, whose Galerie Downtown is on the rue de Seine in Paris, has specialised for 25 years in furnishings by post-war architects and designers.

A cartographic highlight of the mammoth October 30-November 1 series of sales held by German auction house Reiss & Sohn (18% buyer’s premium) was the Insulae Moluccae… map shown below, which sold for almost four times the estimate at €38,000 (£33,670).

Of all the types of playful drinking cups or trinkspiel made by Dutch and German goldsmiths during the 16th and 17th centuries, the example offered by Sotheby’s in Paris last week was surely the most elaborate.

ATG’s calendar of book auctions taking place in the UK and Ireland from November 20-December 1, 2018.