Sotheby's

US: THE MARKET for Impressionist and Modern art saw further consolidation last week when Sotheby’s and Christie’s turned over a premium inclusive $466m (£289.5m) for their November sales of works by the world’s most expensive artists.

HONG KONG: There were major series of sales in Hong Kong for Sotheby’s and Christie’s last week with both rooms offering selections of Chinese ceramics and works of art, jewellery and paintings.

US: SOTHEBY’S have opened their new-look, custom-built Manhattan headquarters at 1334 York Avenue, New York, adding six new floors above the four which previously housed the auction house.

UK: THE world record auction price for a photograph was broken twice at the Sotheby’s London sale of the Photographic Collection of Marie-Thérèse and André Jammes on October 27.

NETHERLANDS: Van Gogh’s oil landscape A Park in Spring, was the highlight of the inaugural exhibition to mark the opening of Sotheby’s new Netherlands headquarters on October 15.

US: SOTHEBY’S have added a well known public face to their emerging Internet business with the appointment of Chris Jussel as senior vice president of their online auctions associate programme.

UK: IT is about as accurate as a relief map moulded from pearlware could be, but why, assembled dealers and collectors at Sotheby’s Gleneagles were asking themselves, was the title of the country to the piece, left, inscibed upside down?

UK: FOLLOWING the sudden departure of two senior men, Graham Child and Joseph Friedman, from Sotheby’s furniture department in London, the auction house has appointed Simon Redburn as worldwide senior specialist of its English furniture department.

FIRST half results for Sotheby’s parent company, Sotheby’s Holdings Inc, show a decline on last year although auction sales results have enjoyed a healthy increase.

UK: A MAN charged with stealing part of the treasured collection of a rugby legend from Sotheby’s faces a retrial after the jury failed to reach a verdict.

UK: THE billiard cue as we know it today is a relatively recent addition to the sport: the billiard mace – with a curved and tapered grip and a block tip – was used from the earliest days of the game in the 16th and 17th centuries right up to the turn of the 19th century.

UK: DESPITE a catalogue entry which cited this walnut, rosewood and marquetry centre table, 3ft 1in (95cm) wide, as William and Mary and later and an estimate of £2500-3500, it was competed to £43,000 plus 15 per cent premium at Sotheby’s South in Billingshurst on July 20.

UK: ALMOST all of the 22,000 heritage chattels exempted from tax since 1976 will not qualify again under the new Government rules when they come up for reassessment, Sotheby’s believe.

UK: June saw London re-affirm its position as one of the world’s two premier venues for selling top quality Impressionist and Modern art with record-breaking sales at Sotheby’s and Christie’s.

THE race for auction supremacy on the Internet took yet another turn last week when Sotheby’s announced a long term alliance with the best known name in e-commerce, amazon.com.

UK: TWO rather remarkable pieces of British heritage met rather different reactions at the Billingshurst statuary and architectural items although both went to the same bidder – a private Middle Eastern buyer.

THE first of the new-format International Sales at Sotheby’s Sussex rooms could hardly have got off to a more successful launch – not only a premium-inclusive total of £750,000 from the 513 lots of ceramics and furniture on day one but also the highest price ever recorded for furniture at Billingshurst, when they sold at more than five times high estimate to a London dealer for £62,000 plus 15/10 per cent buyer’s premium.

ITALY: SOTHEBY’S have been informed that they can release to their purchasers the 23 lots on which the Italian authorities had requested a review of export licences immediately prior to the three-day sale of the Rossi Collection which ended on March 12.

HONG KONG: A WORLD auction price was set for Chinese porcelain when this extremely rare doucai chicken cup, from the Ming Dynasty, with the six-character mark and period of Chenghua, 1465-78, from the collection of Mrs Leopold Dreyfus, sold to Eskenazi Ltd of London for HK$25.4m (£2m) at Sotheby’s Hong Kong on April 27.

Furniture & Works of Art Usually Sotheby’s (15/10 per cent buyer’s premium) offer a sale of English furniture at around the same time as Christie’s, but the Bond Street auctioneers’ next comparable event will not take place until June 4.