Antiques Trade Gazette 49

know how to charge

Libation cups soar

FAMILY-owned auction house I.M. Chait hold

regular Asian sales in Beverly Hills and in recent years have staged annual New York Asian outings in March to coincide with Asia Week. As with the other rooms, the sale drew mainland and Western buyers. Though their Ming dynasty Xuande gilt- bronze cover lot was hammered down shy of its low estimate at $200,000 (£132,500), interest in rhino horn saw this 17th/18th century carved libation cup, right, fetch $60,000 (£40,000). Further evidence of prices for rhino horn carvings going through the roof came with the 16th/17th century cup, top right, at Sotheby’s on March 23, selling at $420,000 (£278,000).

Chinese sales

Christie’s had the strongest showing of Chinese art, netting the firm just over $33m (£21.85m) – their highest ever grossing New York Chinese series. Their trio of sales from March 25 to 26 included the 157-lot Robert H. Blumenfield collection of scholars’ objects, a 372-lot mixed-vendor sale and the latest 82-lot dispersal of archaic jades, bronzes and early sculpture from the Arthur Sackler collection incorporated into the mixed-vendor catalogue. Nowhere was the mainland Chinese contingent’s focus on rhinoceros horn and ivory carvings more evident than at Christie’s reasonably-pitched Blumenfield collection.

This wide-ranging assemblage, formed over the last 30 years, included many fine examples.

Chinese buyers showed little interest in the scholars’ rocks, lesser quality seals and inkcakes – all of which fielded the lion’s share of the sale’s 46 casualties – but paid many times the estimates for the 20 or so 17th/18th century rhinoceros horn cups, such as a $450,000 (£298,000) lotus-form cup marked zhai – possibly the studio mark of Hu Jianzhong – guided at $50,000-70,000.

Equally spectacular was a $700,000

BUYER’S PREMIUMS

Bonhams: 22/20/12% I.M. Chait: 22% Christie’s: 25/20/12% Doyle: 25/20/12% Sotheby’s: 25/20/12%

NB: premiums may not apply or have been set at different levels where prices from sales of previous years are quoted. Exchange rates are those in effect on the day of the sale

(£464,000) bid for an Imperial, engraved, turned ivory bowl comparable to an example in the Beijing Palace Museum, consigned at $30,000-50,000 (£20,000- 33,000).

Bonhams did not stage a mixed-vendor outing but instead offered the 136-lot Margaret Polak (1915-2009) collection of

NEW YORK CHINESE SALES

No of lots

Asian Works of Art

Doyle

22/03/10

Chinese Ceramics & Works of Art

Sotheby’s

Robert H Blumenfield Collection

Christie’s

Arthur Sackler Collection

Christie’s

23/03/10

Margaret Polak Colln of Snuff Bottles

Bonhams

24/03/10 25/03/10

Chinese Ceramics & Works of Art

Christie’s

Chinese Ceramics & Works of Art

I.M. Chait

25/03/10 25/03/10 27/03/10 338 245 136 157 372 82 287

snuff bottles on March 24. Like the Blumenfield collection, it, too, had been assembled over three decades. Though it lacked any blockbuster Beijing enamelled glass snuff bottles, such as the $558,000 record holder from Christie’s New York’s 2005 J&J Collection, the assemblage was a near sell-out. The

Net total

$2.58m (£1.71m) $11.92m (£7.90m) $746,725 (£494,500) $11.56m (£7.65m) $18.55m (£12.29m) $3.25m (£2.15m) $1.2m (£794,700)

Sold in lots

60% 77% 94% 71% 87% 96% 68%

Sold in money

92% 93% 99% 94% 90% 99% 57%

19th century Suzhou agate bottles were among the most sought after, with one topping the $746,725 (£493,400) sale at $35,000 (£23,000).

NEW YORK ASIAN ART SALES:

MORE ON PAGE 52

Travelling mainlanders boost prices

CLASSICAL Chinese painting and calligraphy is a highly specialist collecting field. Though there are Western-based collectors, predominantly in the US, the market is centred on mainland China and Hong Kong. That said, Western houses have started notching up successes thanks to the increased willingness to travel on the part of mainland buyers. A watershed came in 2007 when Sotheby’s Bond Street sold all bar a handful of the 120-lot Mu-Fei collection. Half of that dispersal sold to mainlanders, many of them new to the firm. Sotheby’s and Christie’s both had triumphs in this New York series. A handscroll by the Kangxi court painter Yu Zhiding at Christie’s on March 25,

Happiness through Chan Practice: Portrait of Wang Shizhen, pictured above,

headlined the Blumenfield collection and set a new US record for a classical Chinese painting at $3m (£1.99m).

In the world of Chinese painting copies are rife, but the authenticity of this widely published and exhibited painting was never in question. It bore 15 colophons and seals written by the artist’s friends and colleagues dating to around 1700. Sotheby’s 26-lot classical and modern Chinese painting section on March 23 attracted many new and existing Beijing and Shanghai dealers and collectors. The section fielded only one casualty and was headlined by this $2.6m (£1.72m) ink hanging scroll by Bada Shanren (Zhu Da 1626-1705), right, with a compelling composition of Two Mynas on a Rock. Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48  |  Page 49  |  Page 50  |  Page 51  |  Page 52  |  Page 53  |  Page 54  |  Page 55  |  Page 56  |  Page 57  |  Page 58  |  Page 59  |  Page 60  |  Page 61  |  Page 62  |  Page 63  |  Page 64  |  Page 65  |  Page 66  |  Page 67  |  Page 68  |  Page 69  |  Page 70  |  Page 71  |  Page 72