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The upside of Asian art in London is that the volume of sales pulls in all the Asian and international buyers. The downside of this concentration is that scheduling without overlap is difficult and buyers inevitably pick their way through all those goods selectively. Christie’s South Kensington, who fielded a marathon 600-plus lot Chinese auction on November 14, felt both effects.

Auctioneer Geoffrey Barfoot has noted increased activity at the general sales in the Campsea Ashe rooms of Abbotts (10% buyer’s premium) and the mood has spread to fine art – “provided the lots are fresh to market and good or rare”.

This tiled panel advertising Champagne Mercier was one of a rare ensemble of six panels made in the early 1920s, each 5ft 9in x 2ft (174 x 62cm), on offer under the Prunier hammer in Louviers (14.95% buyer’s premium) on November 17. The other tiled panels, accompanied by two landscape friezes, also advertised drinks (Rhum Negrita, St Raphaël, Guillot Triple Sec, Quenot Dijon cassis, Fine Legrand cognac), and were marked G.F.C. France for Gilardoni Fils & Compagnie of Choisy-le-Roi, near Paris.

In the warm dirge of the Victorian brass band, this serpentine instrument was king of the pumping bassline. But the sad journey of the ophicleide from fame to obscurity in a little under 50 years illustrated the pace of musical change in the 19th century.

A private collection of Wood family Staffordshire pearlware figures was the main focus of a sale of British ceramics held by Sotheby’s Olympia on November 19.

Korean Art: IT was the half dozen pieces of Korean works of art that rounded off the Japanese sale at Sotheby’s Olympia rooms on November 11 that provided the auctioneers with their sale highpoint in the form of this painting by Park Sookeun (1914-65), one the country’s most sought-after artists.

A PRE-VESALIAN anatomy and a pioneering German surgical treatise are featured in the caption story below, while among the other scientific texts in an October 2 sale of early printed books held by Swanns were two important works by Kepler.

Sotheby’s and Christie’s October sales of 19th Century European Art in New York told, or at least seemed to tell, very different stories of the current state of the market for high value Orientalist and genre painting.

THE sale at Amersham Auction Rooms (15 per cent buyer’s premium) on October 3 had a number of items with collector appeal – none more so than this Wemyss cat, right, a speciality within a speciality. The vendors had no knowledge of the value of the 123/4in (32cm) black and grey cat but bidders at Buckinghamshire didn’t need the Wemyss Ware Made in England painted mark to the base to recognise it for what it was and the cat sold to a local dealer at £4000.

Asian art in London, the annual nine-day celebration of the capital’s artistic, academic and commercial expertise in the Asian art field, was in full swing last week with auctions, dealers’ shows, lectures and exhibitions. The highlight of this year’s Asian auction series was this Chinese 15th century Chenghua mark and period ‘Palace’ bowl, part of the collection formed by the 2nd Baron Cunliffe offered at Bonhams on November 11 where it sold for £820,000 (plus 17.5/10 per centpremium).

Egyptian material is the current antiquities favourite, especially Egyptian sculpture, so perhaps it was no surprise to see just such a piece top Sotheby’s November 6 sale of antiquities from the Charterhouse collection.

Some dealers believe that the market for plated silver has never been the same since the Italians ducked out in the mid 1990s, and while it is true that types such as entrée dishes and tureens have gone off the boil, there is still (always?) demand for candelabra, anything set with mother or pearl or ivory (American interest here) and table centrepieces like the three examples illustrated here which were offered at Bonhams Chester (buyer’s premium 17.5/10 per cent) on November 6.

Robert Finan has been holding these specialist sales at the Ship Hotel for six years and next year intends to go quarterly. With the major UK auctioneers having shipped their tribal art departments to Continental Europe and America, the valuer’s biannual outings are just about the only chance for the serious connoisseur to root out African totems and Maori weapons from the colonial timecapsules of the British countryside.

The paintings of Edwin Long (1829-1891) are well known to London’s gallery visitors, since there are works by him in both the National Portrait Gallery and the Royal Academy, but many of his works have long been lost or forgotten.

The results of Hong Kong’s October Asian series underscored the increasing polarity in this market in which there seems no limit to collectors’ and dealers’ insatiable desire for the best Qing dynasty mark and period porcelain or quality Chinese works with good provenance, but little interest in more standard Oriental fare.

The claim against London art dealers Agnews over a painting formerly attributed to Constable has been settled out of court. Sir Simon Day launched the claim over a series of free valuations carried out on the painting – Hampstead Heath: Branch Hill Pond – from 1975 until the late 1990s.

In Cologne on October 26 W.G. Herr (18% buyer’s premium) staged a Jubilee sale to mark their 50th auction in the cosy Friesenwall gallery where, as he puts it, Werner Herr has been “swinging the hammer” for 20 years.

For all those fans who ever longed to run their fingers through Elvis Presley’s hair, now there’s a chance. While locks or strands of Elvis’ boot-polished black hair have been sold in the past, one of more than 1400 memorabilia lots in a sale closing on November 14-15 on www.mastronet.com is something just a bit special.

Back on October 8, Christie’s South Kensington (17.5/10% per cent buyer’s premium) held one of their periodic silver sales where the emphasis is on Scottish and Irish silver. There is a keen collector’s market for such pieces if they are unusual in some way (carrying scarce Scottish provincial marks, for example), but standard material, as with much else in the silver field, is less eagerly snapped up unless very keenly priced. So it proved here.

Wine-related silver is sitting at the top table of the market at present as the luxury boozing culture of hard-working businessmen props up the value of coasters, labels, corkscrews and funnels. But one area that has not benefited so much from the interaction of wine merchants and boardroom boys in recent years has been the standard Victorian decanter and claret jug.