International

The patent dispute pitching a Virginia inventor against eBay appears to be heading to trial. US District Court Judge Jerome Friedman issued a series of rulings in late October that, while firming up aspects of eBay’s defence, rejected the company’s attempts to have the claims – made by MercExchange, a Virginia technology company – thrown out.

OF the three new world auction records taken at Christie’s Rockefeller Center saleroom on the evening of November 6, two of them were for pieces of sculpture. This follows on from Christie’s success in the May Impressionist and Modern sales, their best – as Sotheby’s were for them – for some time, when Constantin Brancusi’s 1913 bronze Danaïde took $16.5m (£11.6m), the highest price for any piece of sculpture sold at auction.

The 12th specialist textiles sale under the Rossini (17.342% buyer’s premium) hammer at Drouot on October 9 attracted keen trade interest, with 76 per cent of the 550 lots sold, yielding a hammer total of some €430,000 (£270,000).

GIVEN the fiscal disadvantages involved, Christie’s and Sotheby’s won’t usually be looking to Paris as a venue for sales of Modern art, but Christie’s (buyer’s premium 20.93%) had a modest French Collection of Post-Impressionist & Modern Paintings and Drawings on offer on September 28 that fared well enough, with 40 lots from 43 sold for a hammer total of €1.04m (£650,000) with seven per cent bought in by lot and just two per cent by value.

FLORIDA hosts a new design fair next year when ARTform, the International Fair for Dimensional Fine Art, debuts at the International Pavilion of the Palm Beaches in downtown West Palm Beach from March 6 to 11.

In May 1919 New Yorker Raymond Orteig offered a $25,000 prize for the first non-stop aeroplane flight from New York to Paris. In the ensuing eight years dozens of people managed to cross the Atlantic Ocean by air, but no one met Orteig’s criteria until eight years later when on May 20-21, 1927 Charles A. Lindbergh made the longest non-stop, heavier-than-air transatlantic flight in his plane, the Spirit of St Louis.

PAUL Sumner, brought in as managing director to launch Sotheby’s Olympia last year, has announced his aim to make Lawson-Menzies the top auction house in Australia within two years.

Presented with individual estimates of €35,000-50,000, two male and female Urhobo figures – just as large as the Urhobo figure sold at Sotheby’s, and possibly a matching pair – were the chief casualties at the mixed-provenance sale of African art (principally from Nigeria) assembled by Marie-Catherine Daffos and Jean-Luc Estournel for Lombrail-Teucquam (buyer’s premium 15%) at Drouot on the afternoon of September 30.

Glittering personalities from the world of arts, they were the toast of Paris in the late 1960s. Capote and Sagan, Karajan and Nureyev, Callas and Saint-Laurent – their presence at soirées was coveted by the self-regarding hostesses across town, but they all paid homage to the ultimate hostess trolley when they arrived for dinner at 10 rue de Dragon.

Listings on eBay can sometimes be prone to hyperbole but when a seller from Ontario, Canada described this remarkable object as “definitely one of the finest sticking tommy candlesticks ever made” few enthusiasts of antique mining collectables could have argued.

NEWS from Cologne, one of the contemporary art capitals of the world, is that installations are as trendy as ever. At Art Cologne 2002, to run from October 30 to November 3 at Kolnmesse, half of the 20 international artists selected for the fair’s promotional programme, whereby young artists are sponsored with free stands to encourage new work, are into installations.

MUCH to the relief of the international trade, international buyers and discerning New Yorkers, the International Fine Art and Antique Dealers’ Show returns to The Seventh Regiment Armory, Park Avenue at 67th Street, New York from October 18 to 24.

On October 4, Christie’s New York sold the Harvey Plotnick Library on ‘The History of Quantum Physics and the Theory of Relativity’ for a premium-inclusive total of $1.78m (£1.15m).

THE Haughtons’ International is not the only fair in town in mid-October and very well worth a visit is the Gramercy Park Antiques Show from October 18 to 20 at the downtown 69th Regiment Armory on Lexington Avenue at 26th Street.

ST James’s dealer John Bly is the latest of an increasing number establishing a presence in the United States. He starts from December 10 to 14 with a selling exhibition with lectures, for which he will take over The Versailles Suite at New York’s famous Carlyle Hotel.

WITH the backing of 65 per cent of a PayPal shareholders vote, eBay have completed their acquisition of the leading online payments company. Despite the overwhelming approval of the merger, some shareholders did object to it, suing eBay and PayPal in an attempt to block the acquisition.

Asian Biennale: Running alongside the main Biennale for six days last month and providing an alternative Asian focus to the glitter of French furniture, jewels and Art Deco at the Carrousel du Louvre was a new venture. The Biennale des Arts Asiatiques, organised by the Association des Specialistes d’Art Asiatiques, was a Salon of 22 specialist dealers set in a marquee at the other end of the Tuileries Gardens, which ran from September 21-25.

After the spectacular HK$37m (£3,394,495) price bid for the Yongzheng (1723-35) peach vase in Sotheby’s Hong Kong May 7 sale, their New York rooms had high hopes for this yellow ground famille rose double gourd vase, Qianlong period (1736-95), consigned by the same private US vendor, in their Chinese outing on September 19. They were not disappointed by the outcome.

Chinese Classic Furniture – The Dr S.Y. Yip Collection: It may come as a surprise to some to learn that the Ming dynasty’s minimalist huanghuali furniture has traditionally been more prized in the West than it has been in the East.

RAYMOND CHANDLER’S Philip Marlowe first appeared in The Big Sleep of 1939, and the copy seen above right, in a slightly chipped and torn jacket, sold for $8000 (£5160) in Pt. II of the ‘Detective Fiction Library of Richard M.Lackritz’, sold by Christie’s New York on September 24, but Chandler was not the writer who enjoyed the greatest success.