International

The Cellar of William I Koch 'White Glove' auction fetches a record-breaking £14.9m at Sotheby’s New York

With an estimate of $2-3m, a first printing of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865) being offered by Christie's New York on June 16 is eagerly anticipated.

A classic Chinese-made European style automaton clock or ‘Sing Song’ sold for $1.27m (£907,140) at Fontaine’s in Pittsfield, Massachusetts.

Tribal art will be making a splash in Brussels around the city’s Sablon area, as it is does every summer, but this year it will be as part of a new cross-cultural promotion.

The David Zwirner Gallery has been appointed worldwide representative for selling works from the Josef and Anni Albers Foundation, after a competitive, open competition between four galleries.

A Ming stem cup sold at Lyon & Turnbull’s debut auction in Hong Kong today for £3.68m (HK$41,560,000) including buyer’s premium.

The Musée du Quai Branly, the dedicated museum for tribal art which opened in Paris in 2006, has been a key factor in boosting the French capital as a world centre for ethnography in both scholarly and commercial terms.

A private US collector spent £2.48m at Christie’s, acquiring all four of the early William Shakespeare folios on offer in a specially-staged auction.

French art market associations have protested at environment minister Ségolène Royal’s plan to push for “a ban on any kind of ivory trade in France”.

A series of antique weapons were sold by Bonhams earlier this month missing their ivory elements after the items had been surrendered to the UK’s Border Force.

A signed copy of Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation of 1863 promising freedom to all slaves in the rebel states will be offered at an upcoming Sotheby’s sale in New York.

A watch by Abraham-Louis Breguet (1747-1823) became the second most expensive piece by the Swiss maker when it sold to a private Swiss museum for triple-estimate SFr3.25m (£2.35m) including premium at Christie’s Geneva.

The Oppenheimer Blue diamond set the world record for any jewel sold at auction at Christie’s Geneva yesterday.

Eric Bijzet has become the latest expert to leave Sotheby’s as he plans to set up on his own as a dealer back home in Amsterdam.

Auctioneers Phillips have changed their buyer’s premium with immediate effect.

Christie’s are to sell another major slice of deaccessioned material from the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, just under a year after they held a dedicated auction devoted to a dispersal from the Met’s holdings of English furniture and works of art.

Phillips have announced the appointment of Cheyenne Westphal as chairman, reporting to CEO Edward Dolman. Formerly Sotheby’s worldwide head of Contemporary art, she will start in her new role in 2017.

Just under $1.2bn changed hands at the top-end of the art market in New York this week as Sotheby’s, Christie’s and Phillips all held their Impressionist, Modern and Contemporary auctions over seven days for the first time. Here is ATG’s pick of individual highlights sold across the week.

Renowned classic car auctioneer Max Girardo has left RM Sotheby’s to set up his own London-based brokerage, Girardo & Co, which will deal “in only the highest quality cars available to the market”.

Joseph Chait, a 38-year-old senior auction administrator with IM Chait gallery and auction house in Beverly Hills, has pleaded guilty to charges of conspiring to smuggle items of rhino horn, ivory, coral and a hornbill casque.