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June 23rd 2012 london selection You’ve got to admire


■ With high volume, single- owner sales remain at fore as buyers become more selective


Anne Crane reports


LONDON’S Spring series of Asia sales took place in mid May, the ten Chinese and Japanese auctions held in the three main salerooms: Christie's, Bonhams and Sotheby's, offering several thousand lots.


Several thousand more were offered in


provincial rooms up and down the country in sales timed to take advantage of the capital’s display and the influx of mainland Chinese who turned out to view and buy.


The Chinese were out in force, millions


of pounds changed hands and there were undoubtedly some very strong individual prices for pieces that appealed to Chinese taste, as discussed on these pages. But there was no wholesale hoovering up of everything in sight at whatever the cost, and flurries of activity from the room and phones were matched by whole runs of lots where the audience sat on their hands. These days the buying mood is more


measured, as the selling rates by volume in our results tables show. This selectiveness is not a new


phenomenon. The change of mood was already apparent in London’s autumn series last November and again in the spring in New York. There was evidence, too, in the most recent Hong Kong series which were held either side of the London series in April (Sotheby’s) and late May (Christie’s and Bonhams). With so much material on offer in such


rapid succession, even the voracious Asian markets can’t absorb it all. The selectivity manifests itself in various


LONDON CHINESE SALES RESULTS AT A GLANCE


No of lots


Chinese and Asian Works of Art Bonhams K’bridge


Chinese Ceramics and Works of Art Christie’s


Chinese Ceramics and Works of Art Sotheby’s


14/05/12 15/05/12 16/05/12


Chinese Ceramics, Works of Art Interiors Christie’s South Ken


Fine Chinese Art Bonhams


Chinese Ceramics, Works of Art Textiles Christie’s South Ken


16/05/12 17/05/12 18/05/12


ways. Judging by the take-up of material in these recent series, as in other sectors of the art market, buyers favour-single owner collections which offer the bonus of market freshness, the confidence of an historic provenance and, sometimes, attractively pitched estimates. There are plenty of recent illustrations of this: the Ellsworth Mirror collection,


464


412 338 375 399 349


Hammer total


£845,850 £9.78m £10.6m £1.24m £10.1m £4.4m


Sold in lots


52% 50%


66% 83% 60% 82.5%


Sold in money


69%


71% 86% 93% 78% 91.5%


89% cent sold by volume at Christie’s in New York this March; Bonhams’ sell-out fifth sale of snuff bottles from the Bloch collection and their near sell-out two-part Voyages of Discovery sale, or Christie’s Mandel Collection of Enamels (83%), all of which took place in Hong Kong last month. By contrast, the various-owner sales, with their much broader mix of


Prized pieces shine through as jamboree


Jades One distinctive feature of London’s


Spring series of Chinese sales was the quantity of jade on offer, with a number of single-owner properties featured alongside individual consignments. Top-quality jades are a very much


to mainland taste and the best pieces of good colour and/or Imperial provenance generate keen demand. However, the sheer quantity offered plenty of opportunity to choose and, consequently, while jades provided several of the series’ highest prices, they also brought some of the more notable failures. At Bonhams’ main sale on May 17


jades accounted for half the ten top prices, including the Imperial Qianlong green, double-gourd-shaped seal of the Qianlong Emperor that provided the series’ top price. Imperial jade seals are among the


most desirable classes of jade object and several have made headline prices covered in previous ATG reports. This version was contested to a double- estimate £3m paid over the phone by a Chinese buyer. Bonhams also obtained £400,000


for a pale green, jade, 18th century mountain carving bearing a dedication from statesman Li Hong Zhan to Prince


Gong, son of the Emperor Daoguang, which was part of an eight-lot consignment from an English family collection mostly acquired through the London dealer Louis Joseph in the 1960s and ‘70s. However, 22 of the 80-plus lots of


this coveted hardstone that opened their sale failed to get away. Buyers were even more selective


at Christie’s two days earlier, where the auctioneers saw over half the 100 plus jade lots sprinkled through the morning session of their King Street sale fail to find a buyer. But some pieces were keenly contested. A 7in (18cm) high, Imperial white dragon vase


carved with the coiled beast chasing a flaming pearl attracted at least four would-be purchasers in the room before it was hammered down to a private Asian buyer for a quintuple-estimate £420,000. Christie‘s also offered a massive,


16in (40cm) diameter, Qianlong green disc of archaic bi-form in a mount of writhing bronze dragons consigned from a European Royal family.


It got away to


an Asian dealer just inside the lower end of the £400,000-£600,000 estimate at £450,000. Sotheby’s had 70 plus lots of jade


on offer in their single Asian sale on May 16. These included 19 lots from


the collection of the Earl and Countess of Jersey formed over a 50-year period from the immediate post-War era and offered for sale here by direct descent. All bar one of the Jersey lots found buyers, led at a double-estimate £560,000 by a Qing dynasty white jade reclining buffalo and kylin group, but the strike rate for the remainder was not quite as overwhelming, with a third failing to get away. However, the two- thirds that did change hands provided the sale’s top price, another piece from an old English collection. The catalogue cover lot was a 6½in


(17cm) high, Qianlong period, cylindrical brushpot of white tones with russet


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