International

THE incomparable TEFAF Maastricht opened to the usual streams of visitors at the Maastricht Exhibition and Congress Centre but, unusually for the Dutch fair, an early big ticket sale came for a British picture.

FOUR centuries of social, commercial and military history dictate that South Africa is just occasionally the source of rare European antiques and works of art.

CHICAGO-based auctioneers Leslie Hindman are to open a new auction facility in Denver, Colorado.

THE term ‘masterpiece’ is all too commonplace in auctioneering hyperbole, but just occasionally it rings true.

THE two Tiffany works of art that gave strong performances within days of each other in recent US sales were not the usual lamps, glassware or table silver.

ON April 30, Philadelphia auctioneers Freeman’s will sell flags from the U.S. Navy’s most revered ship, the Constitution.

AXA Art are offering a substantial reward for the safe recovery of two archaeological fragments – a 5th century BC Persian low relief showing the head of a guard and a marble head dating from the Roman Empire – which were stolen from the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts during October 2011.

Dublin fine art auctioneers James Adam believe uncertainty regarding the euro has helped rather than hindered the Irish art market.

DETAILS have emerged of a brutal and ruthlessly executed robbery which saw two armed men break into the home of an elderly art dealer in Northern Ireland on January 3.

AN eyewitness account of a raid on the Nomos/CNG coin sale in New York on January 4 reveals how police locked the doors of the saleroom and took down the details of all those inside.

SOTHEBY’S Paris have announced that they have negotiated a private treaty sale to the Louvre for an undisclosed sum of a pair of silver tureens, covers, liners and stands by the French goldsmith Robert-Joseph Auguste.

Late December is when the Paris rooms traditionally produce their ‘bilan’ or annual sales figures. For 2011, as in 2010, there remain three front runners who are way ahead of the others.

NASA are trying to play down news of a row with Apollo astronauts over the sale of artefacts from the space programme dating back to the 1960s and ‘70s.

The much-anticipated 642-lot sale of the Prospero collection of classical Greek coins conducted by A.H. Baldwin & Sons of London (in association with Dmitry Markov of New York and M&M Numismatics Ltd of Washington DC) concluded after eight hours at 03.30 EST on January 5.

AS sales go, it is hard to imagine one that could have been more of an auctioneer’s dream than the collection of Elizabeth Taylor’s jewellery and personal possessions.

THE selectivity in the Chinese ceramics and works of art market seen in London in early November was repeated during Christie’s and Bonhams’ latest Asian series in Hong Kong.

IT was a sale tipped to defy a generally lacklustre market, and boy did it deliver! Some 590 items from the estate of Dr Ann Lewis were auctioned by Mossgreen on November 7 at the Art Gallery of New South Wales in Sydney.

RÉNÉ Lalique is most widely known today for his inter-War glass vases, a field that he moved into after his Art Nouveau jewellery. But he also used glass to create a smaller number of furnishings and interior decors for specific clients.

A new auction record for a medieval work of art was established at Christie's Paris