Auctions

HELPED by the boom in Chinese works of art, UK regional salerooms continue to rewrite the record books. Following the £43m vase at Bainbridges of Ruislip, Salisbury auctioneers Woolley & Wallis posted two more seven-figure sums for jades.

SOTHEBY’S set a new auction record for a jewel in Geneva when a 24.78-carat fancy intense pink diamond sold to London jeweller Laurence Graff at SFr40.5m (£25.6m) plus premium.

JEFFERYS Auctions of Lostwithiel, Cornwall, one of the worst hit towns in the recent flooding, are to go ahead with their forthcoming antiques sale as planned.

THE unexpected highlight of a recent sale conducted by Surrey auctioneers Lawrences of Bletchingley was this Anglo-Indian rosewood and ivory inlaid butterfly form jewellery box entered for sale from a local private source.

IT measures over 11ft (3.4m) wide and stands 11ft 6in (3.5m) high, was built in Melbourne and is carved over the entire surface with figure and details emblematic of the foundation and history of the state of Victoria.

A small auction house in Ruislip has shattered the world auction record for a Chinese work of art by taking £43m for a vase consigned to their warehouse auction room as part of a house clearance from a bungalow in Pinner.

THE record-breaking Ruislip yang cai vase, is distinctive for its reticulated double-walled construction, combines various differing decorative elements in a manner typical of Tang Ying's directorship of the Imperial manufactory at Jingdezhen during the early years of the reign of the Qianlong emperor – a period of remarkable technical achievement.

THE price of $56.5m (£36.9m) seen for Andy Warhol's The Men in Her Life at Phillips de Pury's evening sale, meant that for the first time in a New York Contemporary art auction series the top lot did not come from Sotheby's or Christie's.

YOU’D have thought he’d be glad to see the back of it. But duped art dealer David Smith of Neptune Fine Art has bought back the fake Lowry picture he originally purchased for £330,000.

MODELLED as a brickwork kiln, this rare stoneware lampbase was one of only four hand thrown by Guy Sydenham to commemorate the pottery’s centenary in 1973.

THIS George IV rosewood, parcel gilt and gilt metal mounted drum table, in the manner of Morel and Seddon, c.1825 topped Dreweatts latest furniture sale at Donnington Priory with a bid of £40,000.

ALONGSIDE the $65.5m (£42.8m) Modigliani (see story here), the price of the week in New York was the phenomenal $32m (£20.9m) seen for The Finding of Moses by Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema.

BONHAMS withdrew 16 lots, with a combined top estimate in excess of £200,000, from last Wednesday’s Bond Street furniture sale after they had good reason to believe the consignor was connected with disgraced ex-BADA dealer John Hobbs.

RECORD prices for three European artists helped lift the latest round of Impressionist and Modern art sales in New York. With the market much more selective since the downturn two years ago and most of the competition focusing on the biggest trophy lots, the new saleroom highs for Henri Matisse, Juan Gris and Amedeo Modigliani provided further evidence of recovery at the top end.

THIS late 18th/early 19th century Native American ball-head club made a house record when it sold for £33,000 at Charles Ross auctioneers in Woburn, Bedfordshire.

IN the space of a fortnight, prices at the top end for South African art took a significant leap forward as the auction record for the Grande Dame of the market, Irma Stern (1894-1966), was broken twice, first in Cape Town and then in London.

“I LOOK upon [it] with equal amazement, as I do upon St. Paul’s Cathedral; each the work of one man, each the work of an Englishman”.

MAKING £160,000 hammer at Convery Auctions last week, Nobby Stiles' 1966 World Cup winner's medal eclipsed the £140,000 made by team-mate Alan Ball's medal at Christie's South Kensington in May 2005 and set the highest price seen for a '66 medal so far at public auction.

AT £5.26m hammer, Sotheby’s three-day dispersal from the attics, stables and stores of the Derbyshire seat of the Dukes of Devonshire, was the ultimate in a ‘dusting down’ sale.

GENERATING a 25-minute bidding battle at Halls' sale in Shrewsbury on October 20, The Earl of Oxford's Roan or Bloody shouldered Arabian by John Wootton (c.1682-1764) set a new house record when it was finally knocked down to an anonymous UK buyer for £326,000.