Europe

A pair of Dutch library globes by the man regarded as father of western globe making, Willem Janszoon Blaeu (1571-1638), now rank the most expensive work of art ever sold at auction in Holland.

FRENCH culture minister Christine Albanel has announced a major overhaul of France’s auction system to meet President Sarkozy’s urgent call to “turn the French art market around”.

Organisers Artexis have cut Belgium's Eurantica fair from ten days to five next month.

Everyone knows about the legendary TEFAF waiting list. The pre-eminence of Maastricht among international art fairs means spaces at the town’s congress and exhibition centre in March are as rare as hens’ teeth.

WITH their much-publicised US$30m Van Gogh, London and New York art dealers Dickinson had one of the most talked-about works at TEFAF Maastricht which closed on Sunday, March 16.

The 17.9m euro premium-inclusive total generated by Christie’s two-day sale of the ‘hidden’ collection of Charles Gillot in Paris last week may have wildly surpassed the auctioneers’ 5m euro predictions, but the performance of the 476-lot auction nonetheless ran pretty much along predicted lines.

Bonhams staged their first auction in France on February 9 with a sale of vintage automobiles at the Retromobile car fair in Paris.

Widespread concern over warrants that can ignore human rights

SOTHEBY’S and Christie’s have launched an unprecedented attack on France’s auction laws in a bid to halt Paris’s decades-long decline as a market force.

Adams of Dublin were once again top of the Irish rooms posting a €19.4m (£14.6m) hammer turnover for 2007.

For the first time, a trio of auction firms pulled clear of the field in Paris in 2007.

There is nothing quite like dying young for genius to acquire immortality. An object lesson in this came with the predictably frantic bidding from the four corners of the world at the sale of some effects once belonging to Maria Callas. The total of €1.3m (£900,000) trebled expectations.

When the last of the 823 lots in the sale of the contents Ariane Dandois’ Gallery on the Faubourg St Honoré in Paris was hammered down by Sotheby’s on October 26, it provided a $32.2m (£16.9m) grand finale to a month of sales devoted to traditional areas of the decorative arts in New York.

Sotheby’s have posted their highest price in Paris since the French auction market was opened to foreign firms in 2001.

FRENCH auctioneers are to hold their next open weekend of events on November 17-18.

THE French government are so concerned about their dwindling share of the global art market that they have come up with a four-point plan to rescue it. They include a measure that effectively calls for the scrapping of due diligence for auctioneers.

A delegation of 17 members of the Syndicat National des Maison de Ventes Voluntaires (SyMEV, the main body representing French auctioneers) was in England last week for a three-day study tour investigating different aspects of the UK market.

Antiquorum, the world’s leading watch auctioneers, insist it will be “business as usual” following the shock departure this August of the Geneva firm’s charismatic founder, Osvaldo Patrizzi, after a row with Japanese owners Artist House Holdings, who acquired Antiquorum for a reported $30m in 2006.

DUBLIN auctioneers James Adam have negotiated a €3.5m (£2.4m) sale of remarkable papers setting a record for a single transaction of documents relating to the 1916 Easter Rising.

Half-yearly Paris figures to August showed Christie’s consolidating their lead with sales of €100.3m (£67.3m), nearly twice as much as their nearest rivals, ArtCurial.