Sotheby's

SOTHEBY’S Institute are backing a new web initiative to improve interest and knowledge in art and antiques.

Stained glass windows are not common fare in sales of English literature but the 2ft 8in (81cm) wide panel seen at Sotheby’s on July 12 merited inclusion on account of both its designer and its subject matter.

A DECADE after the Thurn und Taxis and Baden Baden sales in the 1990s, Sotheby’s are once again decamping to a German castle to stage another mammoth aristocratic auction.

Despite a substantial fall in total sales, increases in buyer’s premium and vendor’s commission margins helped Sotheby’s post record revenues for the second quarter of 2005.

Long before J.R.R. Tolkien settled down to write The Hobbit, he had acquired a postcard reproduction of the ink, watercolour and gouache painting Der Berggeist (The Mountain Spirit).

Sotheby’s are to link up with the Steinmetz Diamond Group to expand their current activities in the retail jewellery market.

SOTHEBY’s are to launch a sale in January that will openly rely entirely upon dealers’ stock for its content.

Medieval French silver is not a plentiful commodity. Much of it did not escape the great post-Revolutionary meltdown, but one piece that got away was the late Gothic reliquary casket that featured in Sotheby’s works of art auction in London on June 8.

CLASS-action legal specialists Garden City Group (GCG) believe compensation cheques linked to the Sotheby’s/Christie’s collusion case will be sent out by August.

London turned up the heat in the market for Contemporary art when both Sotheby’s and Christie’s achieved outstanding results at their June evening sales.

Following an extensive regional review, Sotheby’s are to close a number of their high street consignment offices.

YOU wait forever then two come along at once. The sentiment so often expressed about London buses could equally well apply to rare early 18th century Continental porcelain teapots.

Sotheby’s sale of a sizeable slice of the contents Easton Neston, the English Baroque country house that has been home of the Fermor-Hesketh family since it was built in 1699, raised a premium-inclusive £8.7m last week when the auctioneers offered 1472 lots over two days in a marquee on the grounds from May 17-19.

SOTHEBY’S auction and related revenues rose by more than 20 per cent, year on year, for the first quarter of 2005, coming in at $72.2m.

Sotheby's New York (20/12% Buyer's Premium) PRICES have steadily risen in recent years for paintings by India’s most established modern artists notably Maqbool Fida Husain (b.1915) and Francis Newton Souza (1924-2002).

The beginning of the end is in sight to the lengthy compensation payment process in the ‘international’ tranche of the Sotheby’s-Christie’s price-fixing case.

TRADITIONAL British pictures have not been one of the strongest areas of the art market in the last couple of years, with sporting paintings being particularly stuck in the doldrums.

ATTEMPTS by Sotheby’s (20/12% buyer’s premium) to breathe new life into the traditional British picture market by creating the category of British & Edwardian Art met with mixed success on the afternoon of March 10.

YEAR-END results for Sotheby’s show a $100m-plus turnaround in profitability for 2004. It’s a figure that many will take as a sign that the formerly ailing auction house has finally shaken off the spectre of scandal and debt.

It is not every day a dealer refuses to sell a piece of stock, but that was very much the case with the work shown here, which was the highlight of Sotheby’s Bond Street's (20/12% buyer's premium) sale of the Adler collection last month.