Features

ATG's Review of the Year – the top stories and key sales in June 2018.

ATG's Review of the Year – the top stories and key sales in December 2018.

ATG's Review of the Year – the top stories and key sales in May 2018.

ATG's Review of the Year – the top stories and key sales in January 2018.

ATG's Review of the Year – the top stories and key sales in August 2018.

ATG's Review of the Year – the top stories and key sales in November 2018.

An unusual dish from the workshop of Namikawa Yasuyuki (1845-1927) sold for £18,000 at Woolley & Wallis on November 14. But this was not the only example of top-tier Meiji cloisonné for sale last month.

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.

A welcome addition to the November 21 Asian Works of Art sale at Matthew Barton (24% buyer’s premium) of 25 Blythe Road in west London were 79 netsuke from the collection belonging to Edmund de Waal, author of the bestselling memoir 'The Hare with Amber Eyes'. London Japanese art dealer Max Rutherston helped organise the sale and took this section of the auction.

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.

For the first time in a decade, Sotheby’s Asian Art in London offering included a designated sale of Japanese art on November 6.

Despite the disparity in numbers, the market for Chinese and Japanese works of art are increasingly aligned.

Among the most coveted of all the standard Chinese export porcelain designs is the so-called ‘Rockefeller’ pattern or Palace ware.

Included in the sale at Lawrences (22% buyer’s premium) of Crewkerne on October 11 was a brick from the Great Wall of China. It probably dated from the Ming period when Great Wall sections were widely built with fired clay bricks, adhered with lime mortar and sticky rice.

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.

Born partly out of necessity and partly out of a reaction to austerity, British design in the immediate post-war era underwent a flowering of innovation with new styles, new materials and a fresh impetus that resulted in a very different class of furniture.

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.

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.

Before the Iraq invasions in 1991 and 2003 Britain was involved in military operations in the region in both world wars.

The new terrors of the First World War also encompassed gas. The initial major attack was launched on the Eastern Front by the Germans in January 1915, then on the Western Front at Ypres three months later against French colonial troops.