Asian Art

At just over $12m (including premium) US auction house Doyle New York made a significant contribution to the series of Asian Art sales held in Manhattan last week with their September 16 auction of the F. Gordon Morrill collection of Chinese porcelain. They found buyers for 82 per cent of the 115 lots, but far and away the star attraction was this large 141/2in (37cm) high Yuan dynasty blue and white pilgrim flask of c.1345.

A grant of £25,095 from the National Art Collections Fund has helped the British Library acquire an album of evocative memories of 19th-century Delhi – Reminiscences of Imperial Delhi.

NEW York’s Chinese Porcelain Company hold their autumn exhibition Recent Acquisitions, Fall 2003 from October 9 to 25 at their elegant galleries at 475 Park Avenue at 58th Street. Some highlights from the exhibition will be displayed on their stand at the International Art and Antique Dealers Show at Manhattan’s Seventh Regiment Armory from October 17 to 23.

A Massachusetts auction house is being sued for breach of contract and malpractice after a Chinese vase it sold for $23,000 returned to auction six months later at Christie’s Hong Kong where it brought $1.55m.

On September 16, Doyle New York will sell the F. Gordon Morrill collection of Chinese and Chinese Export porcelain. Considered to be one of the last great collections of early blue and white Chinese porcelain still in private hands – the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston has described the Morrill collection as “equal in quality to the superb collection at the Ardebil Shrine in Tehran, Persia” – the archive was assembled during the 1960s and 70s, when many notable collections came onto the market.

The resurgence of interest from Asian buyers in quality transitional blue and white sleeve vases was seen at Sotheby’s (22% buyer’s premium) in Amsterdam, when this finely painted example, right, illustrating boys presenting gifts to a number of scholars, topped the 243-lot Asian sale on May 21.

THERE was a greater concentration of Chinese Export porcelain at Christie’s King Street (19.5/12% buyer’s premium) than at either of the other two houses with a single- owner collection of European-subject Export ware offered in a separate catalogue on June 17 and a private collection of famille verte porcelain in mixed condition that was 99 per cent sold by lot and by value, included in their mixed-owner sale on the same day.

It’s not often a sale devoted entirely to a single owner collection of Netsukes turns up in the provinces but this was exactly what happened on June 18 at Halls (15% buyer’s premium) Shrewsbury salerooms.

MAYFAIR Orientalist Roger Keverne is offering more than 100 objects in his current Summer Exhibition of Fine and Rare Chinese Works of Art and Ceramics at his gallery at 16 Clifford Street, London W1.

THE name of Namikawa Yasuyuki is justly positioned in the premier league of Meiji metalworkers as one of the very finest cloisonné workshops working in the late 19th/early 20th century.

VERY much a rising star on the international Oriental arts scene, London specialist Ben Janssens moves into the West End next month with the opening of his own gallery right in the heart of the capital’s art dealing district.

FOR more than one reason, one might have expected the latest series of Islamic works of art sales in London to be a downbeat affair. Added to the prevailing economic gloom, this could surely be a sector of the market where the war in Iraq and its aftermath would have a depressive effect on prices.

SLEEPERS among saleroom sections of Oriental ceramics are a regular feature at auctions around the country and at Charterhouse Auctioneer's 28 March auction (15% buyer's premium) one came in the form of a late 18th/early 19th century Chinese lotus bowl.

HALLS of Shrewsbury will be taking a very active part in next month’s Asian Art Week, having turned up a 157-piece collection of netsuke in the Midlands.

THE war in Iraq does not appear to have had any obvious effect on the latest series of lslamic sales, held in London last week. There was still an international turnout for the three main auctions of Islamic works of art and, in a field usually characterised by selective buying, the selling rates were not especially different, with a take-up in lot terms ranging from just over half the content at Bonhams and Christie’s King Street to just over two thirds at Sotheby’s.

Netherhampton Salerooms (12.5% buyer’s premium) celebrated their first ever fine antiques sale in Salisbury on April 10 with quite a coup. The quality of this pair of 19th century Chinese lacquer cabinets, right, was such that they were always going to take a respectable price.

NOTED New York specialists in Japanese works of art Flying Cranes are not only showing at the International Asian Art Fair from March 28 to April 2 at the Seventh Regiment Armory, they also hold an exhibition of exceptional Japanese studio ceramics by 19th century court artists at their main showroom, Gallery 58 at the Manhattan Art & Antiques Center, 1050 Second Avenue at 56th Street.

This pair of Qianlong turquoise-enamelled Cong vases, 8in (20cm) tall, with coral trigram decoration in relief, made €320,000 (£221,000) against an estimate of €20,000 at the March 7 sale at Piasa Oriental sale (17.94/11.96% buyer’s premium).

“Is it 19th century?” a London dealer inquired of this unusual famille verte vase illustrated right which had been consigned to Woolley & Wallis’s sale with its partner, the more classical, yen yen vase, far right.

Kazari: Decoration and Display in Japan: 15th-19th Centuries, edited by Nicole Coolidge Rousmaniere, published by The British Museum Press. ISBN 0714126365 £24.99sb