Sotheby's

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.

The flying logbook of Fred Shaw, an RCAF navigator, received quite a lot of media publicity when Sotheby’s Sussex announced its sale, because of a suggestion that it sheds light on the disappearance of bandleader Glenn Miller in December 1944.

US: How do you titillate an ocelot? You oscillate its tit a lot. Kenny Everett’s immortal insight into the sexual life of one of the obscurer members of the cat family is usually quite difficult to drag into an auction report. But how can titillation be resisted when someone is prepared to pay $525,000 (£324,075) for this painting of an ocelot at Sotheby’s New York (15/10 per cent buyer’s premium).

UK: ON March 23, Sotheby’s held their first ever sale devoted entirely to the Holy Land.

US: THE BOOKS and manuscripts sold as part of a March 16 ‘Judaica’ sale held by Sotheby’s included material from the library of the late Alfred Rubens (1903-98), a distinguished historian and collector whose Jewish Iconography of 1954 became the ‘bible’ for scholars of Jewish prints.

Works of Art at Sotheby's South

UK: SOTHEBY’S are to re-brand their Sussex operation – renaming the Billingshurst saleroom and introducing a number of significant changes to the current saleroom portfolio.

UK: FOR the moment at least the great international wine auctioneering machine grinds on serenely enough with lottage selling rates routinely at levels of 90 per cent or better.

UK: PICTURED here are three of best-sellers from a trio of horological sales held in the London rooms last month, all of which fared well in terms of overall selling rates.

UK: WITH the re-branding of Sotheby’s saleroom in Billingshurst (see the News Briefing section - 'Sotheby's revamp Sussex operation') Summers Place leaves behind its image as Sotheby’s last saleroom foothold in the UK provinces and assumes its position as the company’s second stronghold in the South.

Ceramics at Sotheby's South

US: THE object pictured here provided, literally and figuratively, the crowning glory of a highly successful $3.65m sale of Judaica at Sotheby’s New York on March 16.