International

STAYING in the United States, but in the warmer climes of the South, Palm Beach, Florida, is becoming a busy place for art and antiques of all types.

NOW firmly established as a truly international forum for ceramics, the sixth annual New York Ceramics Fair returns to the National Academy of Design Museum, 1083 Fifth Avenue from January 19 to 23 with a $75 preview evening on January 18.

OVER 2000 lots in the field of 20th Century Decorative Arts were offered for sale in Paris in late November and early December. The most lucrative Art Deco sale, at Christie’s on December 1, ran to 107 lots (93 sold) and yielded a hammer total of €2.04m (£1.43m), with a top price of €340,000 (£238,000) for a lacquered screen by Eileen Gray (c.1915). A 1927 lacquered coffee table by Gaston Suisse, with eggshell and oxidised silver decoration, tripled estimate on €55,000 (£38,500).

AS recently as a decade ago, the Pennsylvanian Impressionists or New Hope School – perhaps the most recognisable group of painters to emerge from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA) – remained a relatively untapped seam for ‘serious’ auctioneers of the Mid-Atlantic States.

Containing several hundred pencil drawings, a Spanish chemistry textbook used by Salvador Dali during his student days at the San Fernando Academy of Art in Madrid was sold for $12,000 (£6280) in a Sotheby’s New York sale of December 3.

THE US is not the only North American country notching up record totals for auctions of its own domestically-produced art. On November 25 at Toronto’s Park Hyatt Hotel, just a week before Sotheby’s achieved the first ever nine-figure total for a sale of American art, the Vancouver-based auctioneers Heffel Fine Art (15% buyer’s premium) held the highest-ever grossing sale of Fine Canadian Art.

AFTER 43 years, the annual Original Miami Beach Antique Show is a world attraction but, despite its longevity, it still rings the changes, as you will see at this year’s staging from January 20 to 24 at the Miami Beach Convention Center, 1901 Convention Center Drive.

ANOTHER Greek author whom Aldus published was Aristotle, whose Opera Omnia appeared in a five-part, seven-volume edition between 1495 and 1498.

Paris auctioneer Jacques Tajan is severing his links with Tajan SA, the firm he founded in 1994, and setting up an art consultancy firm in Brussels, where he has already acquired 1000sqm premises near Avenue Louise.

The small group of Sir Isaac Newton’s manuscripts and papers offered by Sotheby’s New York on December 3 were not for the most part concerned with the work that will forever ensure his fame – although an autograph draft of a letter concerning the presentation of six copies of the 1726, third edition of the Principia to the Académie Royale des Sciences sold at $28,000 (£14,560).

A STUNNING early Ming dynasty dish has equalled the highest price ever paid at auction for a piece of Chinese porcelain.

THE Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York has acquired a devotional panel of the Madonna and Child by Duccio di Buoninsegna (active by 1278; died 1319) from the Stoclet family in Brussels.

THE gap between the French and American art markets has dramatically widened in the past two years.

THE market for Contemporary art maintained its seemingly unstoppable momentum in New York last week.

NERVES in New York’s art market, just like those in the New York stock market, were settled by the swift resolution of the US presidential election.

IN the competitive world of domestic tablewares, the name of Spode has remained among the very best since production started c.1770.

GLASSWORKS by Emile Gallé thought to be worth over £1.5m have been stolen from a Swiss museum. Thieves seized 15 items by the French master craftsman in the raid on the Neumann Foundation, housed in the castle of Gingins overlooking Lake Geneva, on October 27.

A RARE bird from the English provinces has been spotted in Canada.

THE highlight of a Gerald and Sheila Goldberg collection of predominately Irish decorative arts sold by Mealy’s in Douglas, Cork earlier this month was this finely-preserved Aubusson tapestry, right, designed by Louis le Brocquy (b.1916).

TWO former Sotheby’s executives and a leading wine retailer have announced the formation of a new Chicago-based firm specialising in the sale of fine wine by retail and auction.