Sotheby's

An unprecedented crowd of over 500 people turned up to watch, if not bid, at Sotheby’s near sell-out Part I auction of contemporary art on February 5. A stream of telephone bids created numerous eye-catching results, including new auction highs for Nicolas de Staël (£1.15m), Richard Hamilton (£100,000), R.B. Kitaj (£220,000), Paul Pfeiffer (£40,000) and last year’s Turner Prizewinner Grayson Perry (b.1960).

Contemporary art shines in London: The February round of Impressionist, Modern and Contemporary sales in London gave plenty of evidence that the top end of the art market has made a strong recovery from last year’s bout of Iraq War syndrome.

Sotheby’s announced last week that the Forbes Collection of Fabergé, which had been scheduled for sale at auction in New York in April, has been sold by private treaty to a prominent Russian industrialist.

Most Continental auctioneers combine clocks with their furniture sales, and Sotheby’s Amsterdam is alone in hosting the city’s only regular specialist clock and watch outing. These biannual specialist sales attract a mix of local and international dealers and in recent years Sotheby’s specialist Jos Meis has seen an increase in demand from US buyers for decorative French gilt mantel clocks and from Dutch collectors for the quality Dutch clocks in his sales.

THE close of 2003 gave us much information on the current market in 18th-19th century cameos with more than 130 examples on offer between two European auction rooms, one in the UK, the other in Italy.

The pre-Christmas horological sales were lower key than those traditionally seen in the London rooms at this time of year. With the continuing problem of sourcing enough good material, few top names were on offer to tempt the serious collector, and the general mixed sales which resulted provided some good-value purchases for buyers further down the scale.

Whether your penchant is for Arts and Crafts, Art Nouveau, Art Deco or later 20th century design, and whether you are looking for examples in ceramic, glass, metallic, furnishing or sculptural form, Sotheby’s Olympia’s first Decorative Arts sale of 2004 promises its usual broad mix.

Using the incentive of financial guarantees, Sotheby’s have secured two spectacular consignments for the New York spring auction calendar: the Forbes collection of Fabergé and pictures from the Whitney collection.

Even if the buying power of Americans is not so much in evidence in Europe in some quarters these days, they appear much less reluctant to flex their financial muscles in their own back yard. This seems to be particularly true when it comes to decorative arts.

After years of regular sales at all the major auction houses, marine painting is an area in which top quality works by the most desirable names are in increasingly short supply.

Sold at $26,000 (£15,570) as part of the $3.82m (£2.28m) sale of the H.P. Kraus inventory held by Sotheby’s New York on December 4 and 5 was a lavishly illustrated manuscript of 1661 dealing with fireworks, ballistic design and construction.

Sotheby’s, who have continued the tradition of separate works of art sales rather than combining them with Continental furniture, were actually able to serve up a double helping in December. Their usual mixed-owner offering on the 12th was preceded by a separately catalogued single-owner sale, called Treasures from the Rothschild Collection, of cameos and other antique jewels, gold boxes, silver-gilt, Limoges enamels and other objects made of precious materials.

The Continental Furniture sale at Sotheby’s Bond Street on December 10 proved something of a struggle, just like the furniture elements offered the following day by their King Street competitors. Only half the 241 lots got away, with demand focussed more than ever on the rarest top quality.

THE CORA GINSBURG COLLECTION: Pioneering New York dealer and collector Cora Ginsburg (who died last December aged 92) was passionate about the needlework, costumes and textiles she dealt in.

A very clear indication of the cachet attached to pre Revolutionary French silver, especially if it is a cutting-edge design by a maker of quality, was illustrated by the two pairs of 18th century wine coolers pictured here, which were the star attractions at Sotheby’s on November 20.

A sizeable slice, almost a quarter of Sotheby’s sale on 20 November, was provided by one consignment, the 48 lots of silver and silver-gilt from the collection of the late Frederick Poke, an old school collector whose catholic tastes also included English furniture, Old Masters and Impressionist paintings.

SOTHEBY’S chief executive Robin Woodhead has confirmed that whatever happens with the casino plans at Olympia, his company are committed to maintaining two salerooms in London. He made the pledge during an in-depth interview with the Antiques Trade Gazette in which he also explained that flexibility over staffing and the running of sales were key to future success.

John van Schaik, managing director of Sotheby’s Amsterdam, has chosen to step down from his current position at the end of this year. Instrumental in developing Sotheby’s Amsterdam from a local Dutch operation into Sotheby’s main continental auction house, turning over €50m in 2003, Mr van Schaik oversaw a period of major growth and the move of operations from the centre of Amsterdam to its current premises in the south of the Dutch capital.

JUST in time for Halloween, a warm-blooded and unidentified mortal paid $10,000 (£5920) for this box of tools designed for vampire killing, pictured right. Sold as part of Sotheby’s New York 19th Century Furniture and Decorative Arts sale on October 30, a label on the kit says: “This box contains the items considered necessary for persons who travel into certain little known countries of Eastern Europe where the populace are plagued with a particular manifestation of evil known as Vampires.”

IN February 2004 Sotheby’s New Bond Street will mark the centenary of Cecil Beaton’s birth with an exhibition of his most celebrated photographs. Beaton at Large, which runs from February 10 to 20, will complement the National Portrait Gallery’s major retrospective, Cecil Beaton: Portraits, which runs from February 5 to May 3.