Christie's

Marc Lescarbot’s Nova Francia… of 1609 is an account of French settlements in North America and what we now think of as Nova Scotia and Canada. It predates the more famous first accounts of Champlain’s voyages and discoveries by three years.

A number of the French auction rooms have released their sales figures for the first half of the year, with Christie’s Paris operation taking the top slot.

In ATG No 2292, I noted as a record the £13,000 sale of a copy of Thomas Wright’s Original theory… of the universe… (1750), as part of the Christie’s April 26 sale of the Beltrame library.

West London‘s Chiswick Auctions is to open a new showroom in South Kensington manned by at least eight former Christie’s staff.

A pair of lions from the funerary monument of Charles V of France was the toast of Christie’s Exceptional sale in London on July 6.

The latest Old Master sales in London put in a solid performance with the overall total from last week’s auction series running at £115m (including premium) with one day sale still to take place at the time of going to press.

A moment of good old-fashioned saleroom drama emerged at Christie’s antiquities sale on July 5 when an Etruscan bronze mirror, estimated at £10,000-15,000, sold at £390,000 (plus 25/20/12% buyer’s premium). The buyer was a European institution.

Like many of the world’s major art markets these days, Paris concentrates activity in the Asian art field into series at specific times of the year in an attempt to attract those all-important buyers from Mainland China.

Preserved in a fine contemporary binding of crimson morocco gilt that seems likely to have been specially commissioned by the artist from Pasqual Carsi y Vidal, a leading Madrid binder, a rare presentation set of Goya’s Los Caprichos prints sold for $500,000 (£393,700) at Christie’s New York (25/20/12% buyer’s premium) on June 15.

The “oldest mathematical textbook still in common use today”, according to Printing and the Mind of man, is that written around 300BC by the Greek mathematician, Euclid of Alexandria.

The collection of Tiffany jewels offered by Christie’s New York (25/20/12% buyer’s premium) on June 20 was the finest at auction in recent memory.

More 19th century pictures will go under the hammer this summer at auction houses in London. Christie’s dedicated sale in King Street on July 13 is led by a collection of 46 Orientalist works.

ATG previews a couple of upcoming lots at London auctions.

As in many previous years, the months of June and July signal the arrival of large numbers of important book, manuscript and related sales.