News

PARIS: American buyers were to the forefront at the ArtCurial-Briest sales on December 17 and 18, held in the stylish Hôtel Dassault halfway down the Champs-Elysées, and preceded by an elegantly hung four-day viewing.

THIS was the second sale for the West Midlands firm Fieldings Auctioneers who got off to a tough start by holding their first sale in October when the market was reacting to the September 11 attacks.

A new world record was set at Spink’s sale of Medals, Orders and Decorations (ODM) on December 10. The group of medals won by Air Vice-Marshal (as he became) “Johnnie” Johnson were sold for £241,500 (including premium).

In October 1987, Christie’s embarked on a series of six sales to dispose of the Doheny library, a spectacular series of auctions that ended in May 1989 and raised a grand total of $38m – a sum that remains to this day a record for any library sold at auction.

LONDON: Three dealers exhibiting at the Spring Fine Art and Antiques Fair at Olympia in West London will hold a concurrent joint exhibition just two minutes’ walk away from the West London exhibition complex, with the object of pulling in the public and any decorators who are in town.

PARIS: An ensemble of nine photographs by Gustave Le Gray, all albumen paper prints from collodion or paper negatives from the collection of chemist Paul-Emile Lecoq de Boisbaudran (who discovered the metal gallium), surfaced at Millon & Associés on December 3.

The decorative approach to antique buying has been given a firm nod of acknowledgment by Christie’s. In New York next month they launch the first of a new category of “one-stop shopping” sales, where they will be offering property from a wide range of collecting fields with an equally broad price range aimed at “lifestyle clients looking for the perfect object to decorate their homes”.