Bloomberg’s Scott Reyburn has done a little math on London’s just completed Asia Week. He sees the $93m total as a three-fold increase over last May driven by the overall rise in demand for Chinese works of art that has made the worldwide yearly turnover $10 billion. That extraordinary number (which Bloomberg doesn’t explain) would suggest the Chinese works of art market is somewhere around 16-20% of the overall art market generally pegged at slightly more than $50 billion currently by Claire McAndrew (who, incidentally, puts a figure of €6b on the entire Chinese art market in her 2011 TEFAF report meaning the market would have increased another 20% between 2010 and 2011.)

“Last year, Oriental art accounted for more than 50 percent of our turnover,” Guy Schwinge, director of Dorchester- based Duke’s, said in an interview. “Five years ago it would have been less than 10 percent. It can all be put down to the insatiable desire of the Chinese to repatriate works that have left their country over the last 300 years.” […]

“The number of new millionaires in Asia is shooting up,” Charles Dupplin, a partner at the London-based insurer Hiscox Plc, said in an interview. “So too is the number of them who want to buy art. I can’t see anything that will hold this back.

Chinese Imperial-Art Demand Boosts May Auctions 180% in London (Bloomberg)