International

It’s well known that diamonds are a girl’s best friend but handbags surely come a close second. The two combined can be a killer combination.

The French art and antiques trade is growing increasingly concerned about heavy-handed police tactics following the recent €15m embezzlement scandal surrounding an employee at a leading French bank.

The Paris Biennale is set to move from the Carrousel du Louvre back to the Grand Palais, its historic venue, for its next outing in 2006 after Paris Mayor Bertrand Delanöe unexpectedly vetoed plans for an underground car-park beneath the Palais that would have delayed its reopening until 2008 or 2009.

NEW York’s Asian celebrations in late March and the first week of April always galvanise the international trade, attracting to the city collectors, curators and dealers from all over the world.

A GATHERING of Europe’s leading art market professionals is calling on the European Commission to delay extending the worst effects of Droit de Suite after 2012 in the UK.

Christie’s have joined the throng of western companies opening offices in Dubai.

NEW York’s Asia Week wrapped up towards the end of last week and fair exhibitors and dealers hosting Manhattan selling shows are collating just how successful the enterprise proved.

CERAMICS SALES IN FRANCE £1 = €1.44A collection of drink-related objects and another devoted to Italian Renaissance maiolica were two very different single-owner properties on offer on the same day at the Paris auction house ArtCurial (17.5/10% buyer’s premium) last month.

Maryland auction house Hantman’s will sell personal artefacts and archival material relating to Pierre August Renoir at auction on May 14.

THE added tax burden of Droit de Suite, which comes in at the beginning of next year, could be far worse than feared.

A SMALL Renoir portrait painted in 1913, with an estimated value of €170,000-200,000 (£120,000-140,000), was stolen from the Tajan premises in Paris shortly before it was to be offered at a sale on March 31.

TWO long-term directors of auctioneers Rosebery's are to leave southeast London to pursue a career offering antiques themed breaks from a Pyrenean château.

ILLUSTRATED top right is William Hole’s engraved title page for The Iliads from a copy of George Chapman’s first English translation of The Iliads of Homer, Prince of Poets and The Odysses.

WHILE Maastricht was, in the main, a showcase of Western art, the mood for all things Asian goes from strength to strength in New York and British experts are making the most of it.

WHAT is believed to be the first ever selling exhibition of Mongolian sculpture of the 17th and 18th centuries is staged by Mayfair Himalayan arts specialists Rossi & Rossi at Barbara Mathes Gallery on the third floor of the Fuller Building, 41 East 57th Street, New York from March 28 to April 4.

Unusually large at 2ft 2in (66cm) high x 21in (53cm) in diameter and notable for its carved scallop shell intaglio, this outstanding George III mahogany and brass bound peat bucket shot to €145,000 (£106,600) at James Adam of Dublin on March 15.

THE management team of IFAE’s Palm Beach shows is to take on new responsibilities as Lorenzo Rudolf takes on a new role in the organisation.

Douglass & Aikman’s Almanack and Register for the Island of Jamaica..., printed in Kingston in 1780, contains a ‘Kalendar of Months, Sabbaths and Holy Days, the Hebrews or Jews observe & keep...’ as well as the names of Jewish holidays in English and Hebrew type and is one of the very earliest instances of Hebrew types being used in the Western hemisphere in publications intended to be used by Jews – Ann Woodland’s almanac of the previous year having been the first.

by Richard FalkinerThe calendar year gets off to an early start with sales in New York in January and then nothing much happens until spring is heralded by March. Nature abhors a vacuum and there is always somebody who fills the slot.

Georges Clemenceau (1841-1929), the First World War leader known as The Tiger, and also famous as the editor of L’Aurore, who published Zola’s J’Accuse at the height of the Dreyfus Affair, was the subject of an unusual sale at Osenat (15% buyer’s premium) in Fontainebleau on February 13.