Sotheby's

Anyone who picked up Sotheby’s latest Chinese catalogue for their November 7 sale in London could not have failed to notice the stunning blue and white Qianlong moonflask on the catalogue cover, the piece that topped the sale when it sold for £2.5m.

When the last of the 823 lots in the sale of the contents Ariane Dandois’ Gallery on the Faubourg St Honoré in Paris was hammered down by Sotheby’s on October 26, it provided a $32.2m (£16.9m) grand finale to a month of sales devoted to traditional areas of the decorative arts in New York.

Sotheby’s have posted their highest price in Paris since the French auction market was opened to foreign firms in 2001.

What price one of the most important legal documents in the history of democracy? On December 10, Sotheby’s New York will offer for sale one of just 17 surviving 13th century copies of Magna Carta.

There will be a new slant to this month’s Islamic week of sales in London. In a move presumably aimed to tap into new areas of the lucrative Middle Eastern market, Sotheby’s will inaugurate a sale of Modern and contemporary Arab Iranian Art. The sale will take place on the afternoon of Wednesday, October 24, immediately after their traditional Islamic works of art sale.

The auction of the Rostropovich-Vishnevskaya collection of Russian art was dramatically cancelled the day before the sale following an offer from a Russian businessman for the entire collection.

Following the announcement in August of a newly-discovered 1938 fairground scene by Laurence Stephen Lowry (1887-1976) scheduled to appear at Sotheby’s on December 13, it has emerged that the scene depicted is not, in fact, Beswick Fair, near Manchester, as had been mooted.

Some of the heat may have left the Jack Vettriano (b.1951) market since his Singing Butler made £660,000 in April 2004, but Sotheby’s nevertheless posted the second highest price ever paid for the artist at auction when they sold Bluebird at Bonneville for £400,000 (plus premium) – the top lot of the firm’s annual sale at the Gleneagles Hotel in Perthshire on the evening of August 29.

Sotheby’s match Christie’s with 25% premium on lots sold below £10,000

BOOMING art auctions and a massive growth in private sales have helped Sotheby’s to another set of record totals – this time for the first six months of 2007.

Sotheby’s are strongly opposing proposed legislation in New York that aims to outlaw the ‘chandelier’ bid.

This summer the annual staff-exhibition at Sotheby’s is entitled No Limits and includes 40 paintings, photographs, pieces of sculpture and jewellery by members of Sotheby’s staff.

Bonhams are to take advantage of Sotheby’s decision to end Japanese sales by recruiting their top specialist and consultant.

Sotheby’s have opened an office in Moscow and appointed Mikhail Kamensky, a former director and presidential advisor to the Bank of Moscow, as managing director.

SOTHEBY’S are celebrating a rarity – a profit in the first quarter of the year, when a seasonal dip in sales activity usually means making a loss.

Rumours are currently rife both inside and outside Sotheby’s that the company’s strategic business plan not only includes the stopping of sales at Olympia but also, even more controversially, the closure of their Amsterdam operation.

Sotheby’s will launch a premium credit card later this spring. The Sotheby’s World and Sotheby’s World Elite cards are the product of a partnership between Mastercard and American finance house GE Money who hope to use Sotheby’s status as a luxury brand to attract high-net worth cardholders.

The Asian art juggernaut thunders on with little sign of any slowdown in the market. If anything, the pace seems to be intensifying.

The subject matter of this mid-14th century gold ground may be unfamiliar to many, but that is no surprise – the treatment is thought to be unique in early Italian painting.

Sotheby’s – who were outsold by Christie’s in Paris last year three to one – have announced a series of moves designed to reposition their Paris branch as “one of the pillars of the group’s global strategy”.