Asia

TEFAF have announced that they are in discussions with Sotheby’s about the possibility of launching a high-end art fair in mainland China next year.

The latest TEFAF market report values the global art market at €43 billion for the last year. The figure was 7% down the previous year, but the fall is wholly explained by a €3.5bn decline in sales in China.

Fine art, antiques and collectables worth £8m, consigned from the UK by a consortium of regional auctioneers, are currently on a container ship heading to China.

The Association of Accredited Auctioneers (Triple-A), founded in 2012 by 19 UK auctioneers to attract Chinese buyers, are to hold an auction of Western fine art and antiques in China.

Leica cameras proved one of the must-have auction prizes in recent sales with record prices at Westlicht in Vienna and Bonhams Hong Kong.

Christie’s have won a High Court bid in Hong Kong to prevent another auction house benefiting from using a name that was sufficiently close to theirs to cause confusion.

The Chinese government is considering regulation of the country’s burgeoning but problematic art market.

Fishermen are reported to have discovered another ancient shipwreck, complete with cargo, in the South China Sea near Vung Tau off the South East coast of Vietnam.

The antiques trade could soon fall victim to the global rattan shortage prompted by an Indonesian export ban.

Beijing-based auction house China Guardian is reported to be launching a sales programme in Hong Kong this autumn.

SOTHEBY’S concluded their latest Hong Kong series of sales on April 4, raising a premium-inclusive total of over HK$2.46bn (£212.5m) for the eight sales containing over 2780 lots.

LARGE new gallery spaces in Hong Kong look set to provide the battleground in the competition for private treaty sales between Sotheby’s and Christie’s.

THE selectivity in the Chinese ceramics and works of art market seen in London in early November was repeated during Christie’s and Bonhams’ latest Asian series in Hong Kong.

SPINK have acquired Hong Kong-based Phila China, a philatelic auction house founded by Anna Lee.

A NEW live auction platform which will give UK auctioneers direct access to Chinese bidders has been launched in Beijing.

COLLECTABLES specialists Stanley Gibbons have opened a new office in Hong Kong in a bid to stake a claim in the Asian market for coins, military medals, stamps and historical documents.

IT took 50 bids and half an hour to auction this RMB370m (£35m) scroll, by Qi Baishi (1864-1957) at Beijing's China Guardian on May 22 – the latest demonstration of the breadth of mainland demand for modern Chinese paintings by the country's most acclaimed artists.

SOTHEBY’S latest Asian series represented an all-time high for the firm in Hong Kong.

CHINA’s fourth largest auction house, the Beijing Council International Auction Company, have opened an office in the US with the aim of sourcing material to sell in mainland China.

CHINA has pushed the United Kingdom into third place as a player in the world art market and is now second only to the United States.