News

There is no doubt that a weak dollar has contributed to a weaker UK majolica market – and yet low estimates for good pieces continue to stimulate bidding.

Immortalised on the silver screen by the 1954 film The Dam Busters, Operation Chastise is remembered as one of World War II’s most spectacular and daring air raids.

It wasn’t just top pieces of Americana and Old Master paintings that occupied the salerooms in New York last month, there was also a good selection of Chinese Export porcelain on offer. Christie’s were selling the third installment of the Benjamin Edwards III collection of Export Porcelain on January 20 plus an interesting mixed owner selection in their Captains and Kilns ceramics auction on the same day.

SCALE models of racing cars, and scratch-built models of engine components may not be typical stock for antique dealers but in a very special collectables niche market they enjoy a keen following as was clearly demonstrated by a sell-out sale, held at Christie’s South Kensington (17.5/10% buyer’s premium) last month.

Funded by the Friends of the British Museum, the Caryatid Fund and the National Art Collections Fund, the British Museum has acquired an extremely rare Roman fluorspar cup from the 1st century AD. The total cost of the antiquity, bought from a leading London dealer, was £150,000.

MUCH of the saleroom activity in London over the past month has been of a fairly low key nature – routine sales of furnishings and objects. However, routine needn’t mean unsuccessful. Sales held at this traditionally thinly served period of the auction year can yield strong results, as customers home in on what little is around in the Capital. In the middle of the month, from January 13-15, Christie’s South Kensington held the first of their At Home weeks for 2004.

FRANCE: THE centenary of the Wiener Werkstätte, founded by Josef Hoffmann and Koloman Moser in 1903, was commemorated in Vienna with various museum and gallery exhibitions, and two specialist auctions at the city’s main auction houses – the Dorotheum and Wiener Kunst.