Christie's

HOTSPUR and Jeremy, two of London’s long-established top antiques dealerships, are to cease trading later this year and hold a joint sale of their stock at Christie’s.

London’s flagship June Impressionist and Modern sales saw Christie’s and Sotheby’s notch up a premium-inclusive total of £298m between them in three days.

A TRIPLE portrait of three Elizabethan girls that sold for £620,000 at Christie’s sale of the Simon Sainsbury Collection has now been identified as a picture of the Egerton sisters from c.1601-2.

The only known copy of the world’s first telephone directory sold for $140,000 (£71,430) at Christie’s New York on June 17 as part of an $11m (£5.9m) sale of the Richard Green scientific library.

Christie’s King Street devoted an entire day to traditional English furnishings when a 369-lot all-day sale of the collection of the late Simon Sainsbury was followed by a highly select, mixed-owner, 12-lot evening auction of what they termed “exceptional furniture”.

Christie’s English furniture day on June 18 was marked by the £9m auction of a dozen pieces of top-flight examples and by the 369-lot £13.6m sale of the collection of the late Simon Sainsbury.

AN influx of Russian buyers was in town last week to flex their wallets and work their way through a week-long series of Russian sales in four London rooms. On offer was a rich mix of paintings, Fabergé, arms and armour, porcelain, metalware and anything else the auction houses thought might tempt the Russian palate.

TWO very different scenes of cricket matches in progress sold recently at very different locations. The artists themselves could also hardly be more contrasting: Camille Pissarro (1830-1903) and L.S. Lowry (1887-1976).

Sotheby’s New York and Christie's King Street both withdrew furniture lots provenanced to dealers John and Carlton Hobbs from sale last week – casualties of the unfolding "fake" furniture scandal first exposed by The Sunday Times.

THE auction record for an English clock was broken at Christie's Hong Kong last month when a late 18th century example by horologist Henry Borrell sold for HK$32m (£2.16m).

Christie’s are to adjust their buyer’s premium thresholds, with effect from June 2, in line with changes announced by Sotheby’s last week.

THE gargantuan sums of money being spent at the top end of the contemporary art market continued unabated as the latest sales series in New York saw a staggering overall premium-inclusive total of $990m.

Fears that New York’s flagship May sales might usher in a market meltdown were allayed last week as Sotheby’s and Christie’s posted solid results for Impressionist and Modern art.

There was high drama at Christie's latest decorative arts sale in London, when half the £3.1m total came from this Glasgow school panel by Margaret Macdonald Mackintosh, which sold to an American collector for £1.5m (plus premium).

The Louvre have secured the return of a French Crown Jewel after 121 years, through a private sale with Christie’s New York.

Two strong results for very different pieces were produced in Christie’s double bill of English furniture on April 24.

Christie’s are confidently expecting to set a new auction record for British furniture in London on June 18 when they offer a small but exclusive auction of just a dozen lots under the title 12: Exceptional furniture.

London’s latest series of Islamic auctions, held from April 7-11, produced a series of record-breaking statistics. The result of the week came at Sotheby’s on April 9 when a 14 1/2in (37cm) long iron and copper key to the ka’ba, the holiest place in the Islamic world, sold for £8.2m, establishing a new auction high for any Islamic work of art.

A pair of Dutch library globes by the man regarded as father of western globe making, Willem Janszoon Blaeu (1571-1638), now rank the most expensive work of art ever sold at auction in Holland.

It’s hard to believe there are still undiscovered works by the most renowned artists hanging unnoticed in dusty corners of private houses. But that is what a Christie’s valuation team discovered last year.