Christie's

UK: PRESIDING auctioneer Jussi Pylkkannen should surely have entered into the spirit of things by taking off his black bow tie and putting a bowler hat or a lobster on his head.

UK: Last week London saw Sotheby’s and Christie’s first ever round of major Impressionist, Modern and Contemporary sales in February.

UK: When a private UK vendor consigned a Chinese celadon jade cup to Christie’s South Kensington (17.5/10% buyer’s premium) at £400-600, he could not have hoped in his wildest dreams to sell it for almost 50 times the low estimate.

US: ALTHOUGH literary manuscripts and first editions of the 19th and 20th centuries rather dominated the Christie’s New York sale of December 14, other areas of the market were represented in the catalogue, and illustrated here is a specimen of Dutch prototypography which sold at $26,000 (£17,930).

US: THE THREE year investigation into the price-fixing conspiracy between Sotheby’s and Christie’s entered its closing stages at a federal court in Manhattan last week as a federal judge formally accepted the criminal guilt of both auctioneers and no legal objections were raised to the terms of the $512m settlement in the civil lawsuit.

UK: IT WAS standard case furniture: tables and other useful pieces of mahogany that made much of the running in the 224-lot sale of furniture held by Christie's South Kensington on January 10, topped at £12,000 by a good Georgian library bookcase from a private deceased estate.

Commission fixing charges may be brought against Christie’s and Sotheby’s in Britain following the dismissal of three lawsuits in America that sought compensation for purchases in London since 1992.

UK: Veteran auctioneer Jim Collingridge of Christie’s South Kensington retired last month after a 56-year career at the rostrum.

US: THOUGH he grew up on a Kansas farm, far from the sea, Charles E. Driscoll, who died in 1951, devoted much of his life to the study of piracy and as well as writing a great deal about his pet subject, assembled a marvellous library that was bequeathed to Wichita Public Library at his death. Last year the library decided to sell off the collection to raise funds for other acquisitions and on December 12, Christie’s East of New York sold the Driscoll Piracy library for $427,570 (£292,860).

US: THE PIRACY collection mentioned above was not the only sale held by Christie’s East on December 12. Three important Hemingway lots which formed part of a general sale are described below, and in Antiques Trade Gazette No. 1472 I featured works by Ayn Rand, among them two works on Hollywood, published whilst she was still a young woman in Russia, which sold well.

UK: THIS 63/4in (17cm) high striking table clock proved to be the most expensive lot in a sale of clocks and watches held by Christie’s South Kensington 17.5/10 per cent buyer’s premium) on December 14.

UK: IF you stood fuming on the cocktail party sidelines over the festive season as your wife/husband got on famously with a lecherous member of the opposite sex, then something like this oversized (18in) metal syringe and vial which appeared at Christie's South Kensington on December 12, would have come in rather useful.

NEW YORK: PIRACY on the High Seas may be among the most dastardly of criminal activities, but when you look back at the Spanish Main with all its swashbuckling and early Hollywood Fairbanks and Flynn connotations, it remains among the most stirring and romantic.

Auction houses want disclaimer clause included before payment. Buyers and sellers given a January 5 compensation claim deadline as part of the class action in the Sotheby’s/Christie’s collusion case face a dilemma.

PICASSO’S Blue Period canvas Femme aux bras croisés set a world record for the artist at auction on November 8.

The market for 20th century German art proved dramatically selective last week when the much-promoted Marvin & Janet Fishman Collection came under the hammer at Sotheby’s on the evening of October 18.

$45m fine for Sotheby’s but five years to pay: Diana ‘Dede’ Brooks, former president and chief executive of Sotheby’s, has pleaded guilty in a Manhattan Federal Court to price-fixing with Christie’s between 1993 and 1999.

Sotheby’s board of directors have approved payment of $256m to clients in the civil lawsuit which claimed collusion with Christie’s in setting charges for buyers in 1992 and sellers in 1995.

UK: The first celebrity house sale of the new millennium took place last week near Clifton Hampden in Oxfordshire, where noted aesthete and furnisher to the stars Christopher Gibbs was clearing his Victorian manor house under the auspices of Christie’s.

UK: WHATEVER the privations of life in the Soviet Union, one could still enjoy a simple game of chess. But because official art is turned to the use of propaganda in every dictatorship, so the more opulent chess sets in post-revolutionary Russia became a metaphor for the struggle between communists and capitalists.