International

There tends to be two key narratives about the antiques business of interest to the mainstream media.

One highlight of a February 20 sale held in Italy was the handsome, armorially bound 1694 first edition of the Swiss born architect Carlo Fontana’s Templum Vaticanum.

‘Rock Star’ of physics and Nobel Prize winner, Richard Feynman, habitually refused to sign copies of his books, telling his editor: “I’m not going to go on TV and I’m not going to sign any books!”

Gerald Weinpolter is based in Vienna and specialises in Austrian painting.

There is, of course, no shortage of works on paper to be found on sale at the Drouot auction centre either in the form of dedicated auctions or as sections within mixed-discipline sales.

Auction Technology Group's chief sets out how online consolidation, such as the company's purchase in March of e-commerce portal lot-tissimo, will bring benefits to both buyers and auctioneers...

It is time to celebrate the art of works on paper in Paris. Centred around the 27-year-old specialist fair, the Salon du Dessin, held from March 21-26, will be a whole roster of auctions, fairs, dealers’ selling shows and events in the city’s museums and institutions.

Artcurial has a large number of works on paper as part of its March 21 auction of Old Master and 19th century paintings and drawings at its Paris rooms, accounting for around 40% of the 195 lots.

Clients of the collapsed Australian auction house Mossgreen are preparing to challenge the fees being demanded by firm’s administrators to collect their own goods.

Tour & Taxis in Brussels is a vast swathe of Victorian industrial warehouses on the city’s canal. The complex includes the former train station and its spacious central hall, a long-disused international postal and customs office with links to the German Thurn and Taxis family.

J’y Reste (I am there) is a clay sculpture evoking a symbolic birth created by Brigitte Moity in her studio at Savigny-sur-Orge, a suburb of Paris.

Private sales and Asian buyers helped Sotheby’s report a 12% jump in sales last year to $5.5bn (£4bn).

With options to sell at regular intervals in North America, Europe, Hong Kong or China, the major auction houses and their vendors take a global view of the Asian art market.

Mid March in Manhattan is when the art market turns its cultural and commercial face east. This is the first of two New York Asian auction series (the other is in September), but what distinguishes the spring event, dubbed Asia Week New York (AWNY), is the input of dealer exhibitions.