North America

US: TWO early American longcase clocks with much higher expectations failed to sell in a Freemans Americana sale of April 20, but the inlaid mahogany shelf clock pictured left doubled its estimate to sell for $23,000 (£16,430).

US: THIS 10in (25.5cm) high painted wood figure of an Egyptian offering bearer was described as Middle Kingdom, Dynasty XII in an antiquities sale held by Sloans in their Washington DC rooms on May 9.

A major player in the US auction world is going on the auction block itself. Carol and Larry Farley, the majority owners of Dargate Auction Rooms of Pittsburgh, USA, are retiring and will sell the business at auction on September 7. The starting bid for the fixed assets, ongoing business, goodwill, Website, mailing list, trademarks, trade secrets, e-commerce relationships, archives etc. is $500,000.

Pictured here is a selection of books sold in auctions in London and New York.

ANYONE who thought that Yahoo’s decision to ban the promotion of Nazi memorabilia from its site would spell the end of legal wranglings over the issue were mistaken.

US: REVERED as the only Irish artist to have been fully involved in the developments of French avant garde painting during the early years of Modernism, Roderic O’Conor (1860-1940) has inspired a succession of impressive six-figure prices over the last couple of years, culminating in the £320,000 bid by a Dublin collector for a c.1903 Post-Impressionist oil, Nature Mort: Faience, at Sotheby’s June 21 sale of Modern British & Irish Art in London.

USA: Star turn at Sotheby’s May 15 Contemporary sale in New York was Jeff Koons’ outrageously kitsch ceramic sculpture Michael Jackson and Bubbles.

dmg world media have teamed up with Florida-based fair organiser David Lester to form a new art and antiques fairs group aimed at the very top end of the market.

USA: The gloom created by disappointing results at this month’s Impressionist and Modern sales in New York was swept away last week by the strong performance of contemporary art at the three main auction houses and reports of good business being done by a number of dealers at The International Fine Art Fair.

USA: Fears that the recent slowdown in the US economy would drastically affect the top end of the art market were to some extent realised at New York’s Impressionist and Modern sales last week.

Dennis Tito is evidently not the only American millionaire with a fascination for space exploration.

USA: IT involves a rather longer trip than to North Yorkshire, but among the world’s top events celebrating ethnographic arts and crafts The New York International Tribal Antiques Show will run at the Seventh Regiment Armory, Park Avenue and 67th St, from May 20 to 23 with a $75 evening benefit preview on Saturday May 19.

This month sees New York auctioneers Doyle (15/10 per cent buyer’s premium) offering two significant separately-catalogued single-owner collections within the space of a fortnight.

Every sector of the auction market has been feeling jittery about the prospect of economic slowdown in the US. Wine sales have already had to re-adjust to more sober trading conditions after the binge of sales that led up to Millennium and auctioneers on both sides of the Atlantic have been understandably nervous about rich clients thinking that $5000 cases of wine have become an unjustifiable luxury.

LONDON-based Haughton International Fairs have changed the name of their International 20th Century Arts Fair to The International Art + Design Fair 1900-2001.

USA: First there was The Antiques Roadshow, now we have the Antiques Rivershow. That is the aim of a New Orleans antiques dealer who wants to take to the Mississippi on a decomissioned casino boat with the most unusual antiques fair yet devised.

Some payouts expected by June. Buyers and sellers at Sotheby’s and Christie’s will now be able to sue the auctioneers through the United States courts over transactions that took place in London and elsewhere outside the US.

Golf in the USA PICTURED here is a remarkable wooden golf club that was the highlight of a specialist sporting and golf sale held in Miami last month.

US: A Japanese cloisonné enamel vase usurped an 18th century Chinese jade brushwasher – expected to be the star lot – to take pride of place in Sloan’s (15/10 per cent buyer’s premium) Asian Ceramics and Works of Art sale on April 2, Washington DC.

US: IT MAY be 25 years since a copy of the Elegy on Captain Cook, as “composed and and publickly recited before the Royal Academy of Florence” by Michelangelo Gianetti, was last seen at auction, and this 1785 Florentine first edition, engraved throughout and bound in contemporary calf, would also appear to be the dedication copy.