US

IN what must be one of the least surprising private treaty sales negotiated, The Martin Luther King Jr Collection will go to Morehouse College, Dr King's alma mater in his home city of Atlanta.

THE notorious map thief Edward Forbes Smiley III has appeared in court in the US where he admitted to stealing 97 antique maps worth more than $3m.

SEAFAIR, the ambitious project of a floating antiques selling exhibition along the Eastern seaboard of the United States, has delayed its launch from late this year to next June.

Lieutenant Colonel Banastre Tarleton was one of the most notorious British commanders of the American Revolution. After leading a series of successful operations in both the north and south, he returned home after the war as one of the most famous men in England, sat for a portrait by Sir Joshua Reynolds and began a long-term affair with actress and royal consort Mary Robinson.

THE British Antique Dealers’ Association have called off plans for their much-debated January fair in New York.

Rare and significant works of art from the Old World will just occasionally surface, unrecorded, in the New.

CHRISTIE’S May 17 sale of Partridge stock in New York went according to plan, with a hammer total of $12.5m (£6.65m).

Hedge funds continue to stake a claim on big-ticket names

Pablo Picasso has become the ultimate luxury brand. On May 3 at Sotheby’s New York Picasso’s rare and iconic 1941 portrait, Dora Maar au chat, became the world’s second most expensive painting when it sold for $85m (£48.3m) to a mystery buyer in the room, widely presumed to be representing a Russian oligarch.

A POWERFUL group of top-end American dealers have voiced opposition to the British Antique Dealers’ Association’s decision to stage a 50-stand fair at Sotheby’s New York early next year.

The enormous potential of the market for contemporary Chinese art was dramatically underlined by almost frenzied scenes at Sotheby’s (20/12% buyer’s premium) eagerly awaited March 31 Contemporary Art Asia sale in New York.

50-stand event planned at Sotheby’s

A cache of William Blake watercolours, unearthed in a Glasgow bookshop five years ago, are to be sold in New York after attempts to keep them together in the United Kingdom have failed.

Hidden away in a bank vault for over 80 years, the fabled Damon Collection of rare coins, medals and bank notes will fall under the hammer in March.

Tiffany the jewellers are suing eBay in a case that challenges the very formula that has made the online giant such a success.

Alongside the Americana offered in the New York salerooms earlier this month, there was a strong representation of early English ceramics. Sotheby’s January 20 sale of the pottery collection of Harriet Carlton Goldweitz was followed the next day by Christie’s auction of the Mrs J. Insley Blair collection, which included some key Staffordshire productions alongside its blue chip American furnishings.

Ninety-one-year-old John Werner Kluge is the stuff of the American Dream – a German immigrant who amassed his fortune in the States buying radio and television stations.

A poster for the film Metropolis, considered by many to be the holy grail of science fiction posters, has been sold by London dealers The Reel Poster Gallery to a Californian private collector for $690,000 (£390,000).

INTERNATIONAL exhibition and publishing company dmg world media have acquired Chicago-based Expressions of Culture Inc., producers of SOFA Chicago and SOFA New York.

Less than a month after celebrating its 25th anniversary, the Baltimore Summer Antiques Show has been acquired by the managing partners of the Palm Beach Jewelry & Antique Show from Frank Farbenbloom.