Auctioneers

LONDON: SOTHEBY’S have signed a five-year lease to open a new 54,000 sq ft year-round saleroom at Olympia in west London from June next year. The first sale is expected to take place in September.

Auction houses want disclaimer clause included before payment. Buyers and sellers given a January 5 compensation claim deadline as part of the class action in the Sotheby’s/Christie’s collusion case face a dilemma.

UK: NEWMARKET auctioneers Vost’s say they expect to cease trading within the month after managing director John Vost quit in what he described as a “major boardroom disagreement”.

IN a week that has seen the NASDAQ plummet and general gloom settle over the dotcom world, the massive Tek Sing cargo sale has shown that the Internet can play an extremely useful role in the international auction scene.

NEW YORK: There was a flurry of activity at the Phillips New York (buyer’s premium 15/10%) auction of American Art last week as Benjamin West’s renowned painting of The Death of General Wolfe came up for sale.

A pencil drawing by Bronzino (1503-72) earned Fr10.6m (£960,000) at Piasa on November 20, the highest ever price for an old master drawing in Paris, and a world record for a Bronzino drawing.

Imagine being serenaded at your dinner table, preferably by one of the Python team, with the world’s smallest playable violin.

DETAILS of the planned development of Sotheby’s UK salerooms announced in last week’s Antiques Trade Gazette are unlikely to become clear before mid-December at the earliest.

“Is the live auction dead?” was the challenging question before a panel discussion at the annual conference of the Appraisers Association of America in New York in which four major regional auction houses took part.

UK: The absence of a buyer’s premium at Nigel Ward & Co’s sale on November 18 at Ewyas Harold Memorial Hall near Pontrilas, Hereford was certainly a factor in the substantial price attained for this Charles II pewter candlestick, 7in (18cm) by an unknown Bristol maker.

This Regency giltwood chair may have been one of the largest hearing aids ever built, but it was intended to serve the same purpose as the smallest, mobile device: disguising the disablity and sparing the dignity of the listener.

Sotheby’s have instigated a dramatic ‘restructure’ of their company after announcing net losses of $183m for the first nine months of this year.

UK: Lot 1098 at the Leominster rooms of Brightwells auctioneers offered the clock trade the chance to purchase this rare late 18th century bracket clock by Thomas Berry of Ormskirk, 2ft 7in by 17in (79 x 43cm).

Sold at Sotheby’s, London sale (October 12-13) for £6500 was a rare example of a printed version of one of the letters exchanged by Napoleon and the Sherif of Mekkah, Ghalib ibn Musa’id, at the time of the French invasion of Egypt in 1798-99.

PICASSO’S Blue Period canvas Femme aux bras croisés set a world record for the artist at auction on November 8.

UK: Doubt still hangs over the future of goods consigned to troubled west London auctioneers Academy of Ealing.

UK: The Voyage of H.M.S Beagle is a summary of fauna discovered by Charles Darwin on his travels through the Southern Hemisphere from 1831-6, and became crucial to the formulation of his brutal creed: “survival of the fittest”.

As demonstration that one should always be alert outside one’s narrow field, it is worth citing the Civil War piece, pictured, that was offered in a Jewellery sale at Phillips London on October 3.

Once again torrential rain and flooding has wreaked havoc across the country causing disruption to the antiques trade.

The most startling result produced by the Allan Cuthbertson sale, Bonhams, London 3-4 October was an eight times estimate bid of £34,000 from Andrew Edmonds for a five volume set of The Caricature Magazine, or Mirror of Mirth.