International

Sotheby’s have had to buy back the 59.60 carat flawless fancy vivid pink diamond they sold in Geneva last November for a world record $83m.

New York has firmly reinforced its status as the capital of the global art market with a 25% growth in the value of US sales last year.

A packed saleroom and a continuous barrage of phone bids combined to ensure a near sell-out, multi-estimate result at Sotheby’s in Paris for their three-session auction (in association with Artcurial) of the collection of Félix Marcilhac.

Bright spring sunshine greeted the opening of this year’s TEFAF Maastricht in sharp contrast to last year when freak snowfall disrupted many visitors’ travel plans to the southern Netherlands.

A small contingent of dealers from the UK are currently travelling to Paris for the launch of Cipolat SA’s new biannual antiques fair.

Christie’s has announced a major consignment of Old Master drawings which will be offered over the next two years in a series of sales in London, Amsterdam and Paris.

A ban on the commercial trade in elephant ivory “except in a very limited number of circumstances” announced by the USA this month promises far-reaching consequences for the antiques trade.

Hong Kong’s Fine Art Asia fair organisers have announced that they will launch ‘Guardian Fine Art Asia’ (GFAA), the Beijing edition of the event, in May this year.

Like those London buses where you wait forever then two come along at once, two versions of a rare Olympic torch limited to just 33 examples turned up in separate Drouot auctions in Paris within the space of just ten days.

Paris auction house Piasa will move this spring to a new location at 118 rue du Faubourg St-Honoré, the prestigious Right Bank shopping street, home to art and antiques galleries and to Sotheby’s Paris.

This 19th century French ormolu-mounted boulle side cabinet is attributed to the Paris-based ébéniste-marqueteur Mathieu Befort (1813-80).

Last October, South Africa House in Trafalgar Square, London hosted an exhibition of artworks in the image of, and inspired by, Nelson Mandela.

The book of hours known as The Rothschild Prayerbook sold for $12m (£7.55m) at Christie’s in New York.

A Paris auction firm has been banned from holding sales for nine months and two of its auctioneers suspended for three months following a disciplinary hearing by the government body appointed to oversee auction practice in France.

The Spanish government have cut the tax on sales of works of art by more than half from 21% to 10% as a means of boosting trade.

The annual sales figures issued for several of the major French auction houses (or French branches of international auction houses) showed that for many, though not all, they saw an increase over the previous year despite what has been a difficult economic climate.

Next month, the fairs frenzy in Florida sees a new arrival on the scene: ‘Miami Art + Design (MA+D)’ from February 14-18 to be held in a new circular waterside pavilion at Bayfront Park in downtown Miami.

Baldwin’s and their partners began 2014 in style at the ‘New York International Numismatic Convention’.

The New York Court of Appeals has overturned a decision that could have forced the state’s auctioneers to make public the names of their consignors.