News

In October 1987, Christie’s embarked on a series of six sales to dispose of the Doheny library, a spectacular series of auctions that ended in May 1989 and raised a grand total of $38m – a sum that remains to this day a record for any library sold at auction.

LONDON: Three dealers exhibiting at the Spring Fine Art and Antiques Fair at Olympia in West London will hold a concurrent joint exhibition just two minutes’ walk away from the West London exhibition complex, with the object of pulling in the public and any decorators who are in town.

PARIS: An ensemble of nine photographs by Gustave Le Gray, all albumen paper prints from collodion or paper negatives from the collection of chemist Paul-Emile Lecoq de Boisbaudran (who discovered the metal gallium), surfaced at Millon & Associés on December 3.

The decorative approach to antique buying has been given a firm nod of acknowledgment by Christie’s. In New York next month they launch the first of a new category of “one-stop shopping” sales, where they will be offering property from a wide range of collecting fields with an equally broad price range aimed at “lifestyle clients looking for the perfect object to decorate their homes”.

The third sale in Christie's South Kensington’s December toy triumvirate was their teddy bear and soft toy sale held on the 3rd of the month. The second of their biannual sales in this category, this was a sizeable offering at 319 lots and was well attended by a mix of collectors and dealers.

ONE of only 50 copies of Proceedings of a General Court Martial.... for the Trial of Major General Arnold that came up for sale in a Swanns Americana sale of November 29 was ex-library, bound in later half morocco with assorted stamps and various defects, but this Philadelphia imprint of 1780 is an extremely rare and historically significant item and attracted a lot of interest.

BOUND to be a highlight at TEFAF Maastricht in March is Rembrandt’s painting of the goddess Minerva which will be offered by New York dealer Otto Naumann for $40m.