International

Art dealer Guy Wildenstein has been cleared of tax fraud in a surprise verdict following a criminal trial in Paris.

Over 130 dealers will start setting out their stands next week as the BRAFA art fair, Belgium’s premier art and antiques show, opens in Brussels on January 21.

Sotheby’s has created a new luxury division to oversee the selling of items such as jewellery and cars.

The plastic fiver has become a familiar sight in the UK since it was issued last September and this summer the tenner version will follow. It seems unlikely that glass coins will also appear – but that was not the case in the US in 1942.

Phillips has made two new hires in the Americas from rival Christie’s as it continues to expand in the region.

The hive of art world activity in the Big Apple in January kicks off with the New York International Numismatic Convention, or NYINC, which takes place at the Waldorf Astoria.

Australian auctioneers Mossgreen set an AUS$2m record for a single-owner sale of Asian Art sold down-under when they offered part of Raphy Star’s collection in Sydney earlier this month.

A Chinese hardstone imperial seal set a record at Drouot in Paris on when Pierre Bergé & Associés sold this impressively carved 4in (10.5cm) square specimen, inscribed 'Qianlong Yu Bi Zhi Bao', for a hammer price of €17.5m (£14.58m).

An archive of over 400 letters and drawings by Sir William Orpen (1878-1931) has been acquired by the National Gallery of Ireland in a deal brokered by Dublin auctioneers Whyte’s.

The market for Lucie Rie ceramics continues to thrive. A new auction high for the doyenne of the British studio pottery movement was posted by Phillips in New York this month– the fourth occasion a record has been set in just two years.

A rediscovered chalk portrait by Andrea d’Angiolo, called Andrea del Sarto (1486-1530), has set an record for any Old Master drawing sold at auction in France.

A suspected antique libation cup is among €100,000 worth of goods seized during a raid in Ireland.

A small Castilian mediaeval alabaster statue of Saint Cecilia playing a portable organ led a strong selection of traditional art and antiques in the Paris pre-Christmas auctions at Hotel Drouot.

A remarkable drawing by German artist Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld (1794-1872) that was recently restituted to the family of a Holocaust victim has sold for €1.7m (£1.44m) at an auction in Berlin.

Asian art dealers Roger and Miranda Keverne donated a Chinese export painting, depicting pirates on the China coast, to the Hong Kong Maritime Museum.

An Enigma cipher machine made a world-record price last week when it was hammered down for $380,000 (£301,379).

Dallas based Heritage Auctions is suing a Christie’s-owned firm in the US over alleged data theft.

This Rembrandt Bugatti bronze of ‘The Giant Anteater’ (Le Grand Fourmilier) more than lived up to its status as the potential star at a recent auction in Paris.

Plastic money has been a bone of contention recently thanks to the strange revelation that the new UK £5 notes include animal fat. But one day the polymer notes will surely be as normal and accepted as the existing paper examples, assuming physical money has not all but disappeared anyway by then.