North America

WITH the emphasis this week on Europe, a reminder that life goes on elsewhere.

Bonhams are expanding their existing New York presence by taking gallery space at the Fuller Building, 595 Madison Ave. The new space will enable Bonhams to hold regular sales in New York beginning in the summer.

A New York jury has ruled in a legal case that has locked the horns of the two biggest names in real-time Internet bidding.

ANOTHER feature of this early winter New York season is the sales held by Baldwin’s Auctions, Dmitry Markov and Münzen und Medaillen (New York branch) (all 15% buyer’s premium).

Atlanta, Georgia will have a twice-yearly vetted antiques fair to be launched by dmg World Media in October 2006.

The Cultural Property Advisory Committee will meet next week to consider the request from the People's Republic of China to seek restrictions on Chinese works of art imported to America.

At first glance, this 7ft 6in x 5ft 7in (2.28 x 1.70m) canvas, right, of the Temptation of Adam by the French artist Jean-Baptiste Santerre (1651-1717) might seem to be a fairly standard, if unusually large, depiction of one of the most hackneyed religious themes in Western art.

UK Trade & Investment, the export directorate of the Department of Trade, has offered, through the British Art Market Federation, a grant of £25,000 to be shared among 19 UK dealers showing at the eighth annual Chicago Antiques Fair from April 29 to May 2.

It would be amiss not to record the fortunes of the rare George II provincial silver tea kettle that, as reported in ATG no.1663, dated November 6 had been consigned for sale at Toronto fine art auctioneers Waddingtons (15% buyer’s premium) on December 6.

Damien Hirst’s tiger shark suspended in a tank of formaldehyde, once the centrepiece of the Charles Saatchi collection and arguably the best-known work by a late 20th century British artist, has been sold to an American collector for a price close to £7m.

As was reported a couple of weeks ago, regional schools of American painting from the late 19th and early 20th centuries are one of the strongest sectors on the art market on other side of the Atlantic at the moment.

A UNIQUE archive of journals and notebooks, including the secret recipe for Tiffany’s signature Favrile glass, is now available for public inspection at the Corning Museum in New York.

For the first time in its 19-year history, Atlantique City – New Jersey’s massive indoor antiques and collectables show – is going to allow shoppers through the Atlantic City Convention Center doors on a Friday.

BIDDERS at this week’s sale of the Rowler Collection of Georg Jensen silver at Christie’s Rockefeller Center, New York, might be interested to learn that, according to Michael James, founder and director of Jensen specialists The Silver Fund, virtually the entire collection of some 800 pieces was acquired for Rowler by The Silver Fund over the past six years.

NEVER forget there is another armory in Manhattan, the one downtown at Lexington Avenue at 26th Street, and that one hosts some splendid shows throughout the year, starting in 2005 with the appropriately named Antiques at the Armory from January 21 to 23.

AFTER 50 years at Manhattan’s Seventh Regiment Armory, Park Avenue at 67th Street, it is little wonder that the Winter Antiques Show is the favourite fair of many New Yorkers – and, increasingly, for many others.

STAYING in the United States, but in the warmer climes of the South, Palm Beach, Florida, is becoming a busy place for art and antiques of all types.

NOW firmly established as a truly international forum for ceramics, the sixth annual New York Ceramics Fair returns to the National Academy of Design Museum, 1083 Fifth Avenue from January 19 to 23 with a $75 preview evening on January 18.

AS recently as a decade ago, the Pennsylvanian Impressionists or New Hope School – perhaps the most recognisable group of painters to emerge from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA) – remained a relatively untapped seam for ‘serious’ auctioneers of the Mid-Atlantic States.

Containing several hundred pencil drawings, a Spanish chemistry textbook used by Salvador Dali during his student days at the San Fernando Academy of Art in Madrid was sold for $12,000 (£6280) in a Sotheby’s New York sale of December 3.