Industry data

Sotheby’s figures for the first half of 2014 saw a significant increase in auction totals help them to a 20% rise in operating income compared to the equivalent period last year.

Christie’s reported auction sales for the first half of 2014 of $3.6bn (£2.2bn), a 23% rise on the same period last year. Sotheby’s took $3.12bn (£1.9bn), a 22% increase.

There was no slowing down in the Contemporary art market as the latest sales in New York posted a record for any auction series.

Reputation and brand building is likely to become the single most important component to success in selling art and antiques online, a market now worth $1.57bn.

A sharp decline in the movement of fine art between the UK and its main trading partners in the US and Switzerland is the starkest feature of the latest set of import and export figures.

Following last week’s announcement of their global sales totals, Bonhams have now released figures for their 2013 revenues and profits as well.

New York has firmly reinforced its status as the capital of the global art market with a 25% growth in the value of US sales last year.

Bonhams have released their sales figures for 2013, with the company claiming third place in the global hierarchy after Christie’s and Sotheby’s.

There are very few positives to take from the latest findings of The Antique Collectors’ Club’s Annual Furniture Index (AFI). For reasons of fashion and function, the English antique furniture market remains in a parlous state and no category from early oak to Georgian mahogany held firm.

Optimism permeated the UK’s regional auction market across much of the last year.

A decade of rising gold prices came to an end as 2013 turned into 2014 with a 28% fall over the past 12 months.

Showing up at TEFAF Maastricht in the southern Netherlands with a stand cobbled together from stale, lacklustre stock is tantamount to professional suicide, the sort of nightmare that has dealers waking up in a cold sweat.

Green shoots in the market for the most iconic of all English furniture was among the more encouraging findings of the Antique Furniture Price Index in 2012.

Sotheby’s have seen a 50% increase of revenues generated from private treaty sales for the third quarter of 2012.

Edvard Munch’s ‘The Scream’ came to the block at just the right time for Sotheby’s when it set the record for anything ever sold at auction.

Of all the statistics – and there are many – to emerge from the British Antique Dealers’ Association 2011 Survey, it is the £855m ($1.4bn) estimated turnover among members that stands out.

Nearly one in five of all sales by LAPADA dealers are now online, according to the fine art and antique dealer association’s latest survey, covering 2011.

Christie’s first half results for 2012 show that the focus of competition at the top end of the international auction business remains the private sales market and online auctions.

The auction business often runs counter-cyclical to wider economic fortunes, so it’s no great surprise that the strong results posted in 2011 by many of Britain’s regional auctioneers have been mirrored across the Atlantic.

Sotheby’s auction and related revenues were down 12% at $105m year on year for the first quarter of 2012.