International

A large, gilt-copper altar statue of Amitayus, the Buddha of Infinite Life, on a lotus flower base, right, 3ft 2in (96cm) tall and hailing from Inner Mongolia/Dolonnor or China (c.1700), proved the main attraction at Nagel’s Asian Art sale in Stuttgart on November 10, selling for DM420,000 (£134,000).

GERMANY: Joseph Beuys’ Sonnenkreuz (1947-48), a patinated bronze sculpture 15 x 81/4in (37 x 21cm), evoking a crucifix against a radiating sun, sold comfortably over estimate for DM200,000 (£64,000) at the Lempertz Contemporary Art sale in Cologne on December 5.

BELGIUM (£1=BFr63): Antwerp's Campo Vlaamse Kaai enjoyed a pleasant pre-Christmas surprise at their two-day sale on December 11/12 when A Hostage, a large work by Edmund Blair Leighton (1853-1922) measuring 3ft 8in by 4ft 10in (1.12 x 1.48m), featuring a girl leaning on a wall, gazing wistfully out to sea, raced to BFr3.1m (£49,200) against an inexplicably low estimate of BFr8000-12,000.

GERMANY: TYPEWRITERS may not be renowned for their beauty but there was undeniable aesthetic charm, as well as historic significance, to the 1867 Malling Hansen Writing Ball that set a new world record price for an historical typewriter with a double-estimate DM150,000 (£48,000) for Auction Team Köln in Cologne on December 1.

IT CANNOT often be said of an auction catalogue that its lot numbers will be used for a very long time, perhaps a century or more, as reference numbers in a standard academic publication. The catalogue of Numismatik Lanz of Munich is just such a one.

USA : It was no surprise that the star lot in a star-studded Americana sale at Christie’s New York on January 18 and 19 was the Lafayette-Washington pair of saddle pistols which fetched $1.8m (£1,285,715) and established a new world auction record for a firearm.

USA: Butterfields Auctioneers are cutting their Los Angeles staff by more than half as part of a major restructuring programme that will lead to a greater focus on San Francisco.

A NEW survey of US auctioneers shows distinct trends developing in online auctions that should help them establish their presence long term as part of the selling process for antiques.

PARIS: A prestige series of auctions held by Tajan at the Hôtel George V just before Christmas (December 17-19) yielded just under £7m hammer.

“Fascism, charged with Idealistic values, is applauded by all of those who are legitimately able to call themselves Italian poets, novelists and painters. We are sure that in Mussolini we have the Man who will know how to value correctly the force of our Art dominating the world.”

PARIS: This extraordinary 2ft 3in (69cm) showpiece entitled Christus Vincit, made by Joseph Chaumet for the 1900 Exposition Universelle, sold for Fr2.8m (£267,000) at Calmels-Chambre-Cohen on December 10.

SPAIN: The real star of the Sala Retiro (16% buyer’s premium) main sale of the season, held on December 12 and 13 was a piece of silver, specifically a large, 153/4in (40cm) high silver lidded jug made in Spain in the first third of the 17th century.

SOTHEBY’S have given the autograph documentation and picture, right, a hefty estimate of €500,000-750,000 for a very good reason: the picture is now thought to be the earliest image made by photographic means.

PARIS: The Piasa letters and manuscripts sale on December 17 brought Fr7.25m (£690,000) hammer with just 1 per cent bought in, and no fewer than 18 pre-emptions for the Bibliothèque Nationale, Comédie Française, Assemblée Nationale, Musée Victor-Hugo, and the towns of Avignon, Grenoble and Besançon.

FRANCE: A gilded and bleu céleste Louis XVI Sèvres cup and saucer, right, 51/2in (14cm) tall and known as the Gobelet Dauphin, sold over estimate for Fr260,000 (£24,800) at Piasa in Paris on December 7.

First antiques event set for early February: Scott Sandman, media relations chief at the New York State Division of Military and Naval Affairs, has confirmed that New York City’s armories are once again open for business.

A court decision to proceed with a case against a member of the trade is expected to deal a major blow to the United States’ antiquities business.

FRANCE: Just weeks after Sotheby’s and Christie’s first sales in Paris, the Hôtel Drouot is the target of two takeover bids, from Barclays Private Equity, an investment fund, and Pierre Bergé, longtime president of the Yves St-Laurent fashion house and a former chairman of the Paris Opera.

In October 1987, Christie’s embarked on a series of six sales to dispose of the Doheny library, a spectacular series of auctions that ended in May 1989 and raised a grand total of $38m – a sum that remains to this day a record for any library sold at auction.

ONE of only 50 copies of Proceedings of a General Court Martial.... for the Trial of Major General Arnold that came up for sale in a Swanns Americana sale of November 29 was ex-library, bound in later half morocco with assorted stamps and various defects, but this Philadelphia imprint of 1780 is an extremely rare and historically significant item and attracted a lot of interest.