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London’s Asia Week Auctions Make $92m

November 14, 2011 by Marion Maneker

Bloomberg’s Scott Reyburn recaps London’s Asian Art Week and tries to suggest that the market for Chinese Works of Art is cooling. But his evidence suggests otherwise. The London auctions made £57.4m up from £37.4m which is a 50% increase. Although 44% of the lots in these sales failed to find buyers, that number is consistent with most auctions of Chinese Works of Art which have much lower sell-through rates:

Sotheby’s, Christie’s International and Bonhams offered a bumper crop of 1,695 Chinese lots at their main salesrooms as part of the 14th annual Asian Art in London event. […] 44 percent of the material was rejected. The equivalent sales last November raised 37.4 million pounds.

The international trade in Chinese art is worth at least $10 billion a year, according to Bloomberg calculations.

Reyburn also collected tales of picky buyers and credit constraints from private dealers who may indeed be seeing a slowdown:

During the first week of the event that ends on Nov. 12, Chinese buyers snapped up all but two of the 14 pieces from a collection of 17th-century huanghuali wood furniture exhibited by Mayfair dealer Giuseppe Eskenazi. The collection had been acquired in the 1990s and prices ranged from $60,000 to more than $1 million, said the gallery.

Berwald sold a rare Han dynasty terracotta of a long- sleeved dancer to a U.S. collector for a price between 200,000 pounds and 300,000 pounds.

Chinese Vase Pushes Asia-Art Sale to Record $92 Million in U.K. (John Berwald)

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Filed Under: Auction Results

About Marion Maneker

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