Industry data

IT has been revealed that the sum paid for the contents of Dumfries House in Ayrshire was £30m. The contents were acquired for the nation with the help of a loan from the Prince of Wales shortly before they were due to be sold at auction in 2007.

ATG readers spend £1.1bn a year on art and antiques, £800m of it at auction.

CHRISTIE’S have announced worldwide sales of £1.7bn ($2.57m) for the first half of 2010 – 46 per cent up on the same period for 2009.

CINOA, the international confederation of art dealers, are appealing for ATG readers' help in their latest study, entitled The Changing Role of the Art Dealer: Historical and Future Perspectives.

SOTHEBY’S first quarter results have been boosted by February’s healthy Contemporary and Impressionist sales in London, showing the company on a decisive upward curve after last year’s slump in revenues.

BUSINESS is holding up well for members of the British Antique Dealers’ Association despite the recession. With a projected combined turnover of about £752m, the impact of the downturn has not been as heavy as feared.

IMPORTS and exports of art and antiques for the UK shrank by around a quarter in 2009. In what proved to be one of the most difficult trading years since the early 1990s, exports across the globe fell by 24.3% to just over £2bn, while imports dropped by 26.2% to £1.86bn.

RUNNING a tighter ship and targeting commissions to bring a better yield have helped Sotheby’s achieve the second biggest quarterly profits in the company’s history.

THE UK has almost drawn level with the United States as the world’s premier art market by value, according to the latest report commissioned by The European Fine Art Foundation.

BEIJING-based auction house China Guardian has published record sales results for 2009.

IT should be a brighter year ahead for trade according to the 2009 LAPADA Membership Survey.

A SURVEY of members by the British Antique Dealers Association has found that late payments as a result of the recession are causing a significant number of them cash-flow problems.

CHRISTIE’S have announced a 24 per cent year-on-year fall in sales for 2009 to £2.1bn.

HOPES of a recovery in the value of antique furniture have been dealt a blow after the Antiques Collectors’ Club’s Annual Furniture Index (AFI) saw prices fall by seven per cent during 2009.

IN a year dominated by Christie’s blockbuster 342m euros (£308m) sale of the Bergé/St-Laurent Collection, most Paris auctioneers reported a fall in sales averaging around 20 per cent. There were, however, signs of confidence returning to the market.

Inertia again characterised the Antiques Collectors' Club's annual Antique Furniture Index (AFI) in 2008. But in a year when so many economic investments ended up performing poorly, a negligible fall of one per cent was far from devastating.

THE latest Goverment Import/Export figures indicated the final effects of the art market boom before the downturn seen in October.

THE latest series of contemporary art auctions in New York showed how much the market has fallen since its peak. With sale totals down well over 50 per cent from last year’s autumn series held at the height of the boom, the extent of the damage caused by the current economic distress and diminished confidence amongst buyers was manifest. The question now is will prices stabilise or fall further?

GUARANTEES slashed, costs to follow. That’s the message from Sotheby’s as they announce third quarter losses of $46.2m. And consignors will have to be more realistic about the deals they can secure and their expectations at auction in future.

THE instability of stock markets led to sharp rises in the price of gold last week as investors took to buying precious metals as a safe haven from the financial turmoil seen across the globe.