Bonhams Auction

London's five-star hotel, The Lanesborough, is selling off a collection of hotel furniture at Bonhams, Knightsbridge, as part of its monthly Period Design sale on March 29. The furniture had been used in the hotel since its opening in 1991. The furniture is being sold because the hotel is creating a new suite by interior designer Alberto Pinto. The lavish first-floor suite will be located on the first floor, overlooking Hyde Park Corner, and will include four bedrooms, a living room, a dining room, a kitchen and four and a half bathrooms. The Lanesborough Suite will cost £14,000 plus VAT per night. The collection up for sale at Bonhams includes approximately 80 pieces, such as chandeliers, mirrors, paintings, furniture and works of art. Everything is being sold without reserve and prices range from £30 to £3,000.

The Lanesborough is located in Knightsbridge overlooking Hyde Park and has 95 guest rooms including 43 suites. Guest rooms and suites have Sony VAIO laptops in all guest rooms and fresh fruit and mineral water replenished daily. The room decor blends the latest technology with Regency-style furniture and art. Rooms start from £375.

A blue and white porcelain Dragon jar had a huge result at Bonhams & Butterfields in San Francisco at the Fine Asian Works of Art sale on Monday December 13th. The 14-inch high jar was described conservatively as Qianlong Mark, Late Qing/Republic Period and given a pre-sale estimate of $10,000-15,000. But bidders who felt the dragon jar was a unique treasure pushed the bidding sky-high. It eventually sold for $7.658 million.

Dessa Goddard, Vice President and Director, Asian Works of Art said, speaking about the sale: "The jar proved to be a puzzle for several clients with whom I spoke who all declared it to be unique. Without a consensus of opinion we felt obliged to be cautious with our attribution. Needless to say, we are elated that the jar achieved such a spectacular price. Its sale provided a fantastic slice of auction drama that our clients and staff will remember for many years to come."

The jar is decorated with bands of plantain leaves, waves, and a cloud-collar at the waisted neck and broad shoulders. The sides are painted with six dragons emerging from crashing waves and flying amid stylized clouds and flames. The sale brought in more than $19 million total.

Just last month an 18th century Chinese porcelain vase from the Qianlong period stunned the world when it sold for £43 million ($69.3 million) at Bainbridges Auctions. The vase was only estimated to sell for £1.2 million but fierce bidding among Chinese would-be buyers drove up the price. The vase sold to a Chinese bidder who turned up to bid on behalf of an undisclosed buyer.

At Bonhams & Butterfields Natural History auctions it's often the big items like the massive Alledomsmus shown above (estimated at $130,000-$150,000) that attract attention but a lot of the smaller specimens would actually work with people's decor. Many of the items to be auctioned off at Bonhams & Butterfields annual holiday auction of Natural History on December 12, 2010 in Los Angeles are prehistoric pieces that could be quite beautiful on display in modern homes. The collections of arrowheads, sea urchins, shark jaws and coral and even butterflies are both decorative and mounted history.

There is also a selection of fine jewelry including pieces that incorporate dinosaur bone, fossil ammonites and trilobites, carved mammoth ivory and various types of petrified wood. A few highlights of the preview are after the jump.If you see anything you like, bidding starts at 10 a.m.

I've never seen a hat quite like it. The piece above is titled the "Deep Blue Sea" and was created by Australian master milliner Ann Maree Willett and opal miners Vicki and Peter Drackett to showcase opals mined at Australia's famous Lightning Ridge. The hat will be sold at the "Nature of Opals" sale at Bonhams & Butterfields, San Francisco on November 10. The hat is formed from hand-blocked Australian felt, decorated with bright feathers and carrying 26 opals weighing approximately 1,447 carats. The opals were carved into beautiful microsculptures by Daniela L'Abbate and Christine Roussel and placed in sterling silver and 18-karat gold settings by master goldsmith Gerd Gerold Schulz. It is estimated at between $150,000 and $200,000 which would place it among the most expensive hats ever sold at auction. The world's most expensive hat is the Chapeau d'Amour-the "hat of love"-created by designer Louis Mariette. It is made of woven platinum and covered in diamonds and has a value of $2.7 million.

The sale also includes a wide variety of the types of opals available from brown boulder opals shot through with blue flashes, to orangy fire opals and plenty of white opals showing bright rainbow fire. Many lots are intricately carved and some are opalized fossils of flora and fauna. Before the November 10 auction, Bonhams & Butterfields will hold highlight presentations in Los Angeles October 1-3 and New York October 16-18, followed by a full preview in San Francisco from November 6-9.

[via National Jeweler]

A rare single malt has sold for just over £25,000, making it one of the world's most expensive bottles of whisky.

The Glenfiddich, distilled before the start of the Second World War, went under the hammer for £25,200, including the buyer's premium, at auctioneer Bonhams' whisky sale in Edinburgh yesterday.

The 70cl bottle, dating to 1937, was one of only 61 produced and part of a batch of ten released in 2001.

Experts say the single malt smells of fresh peat, burnt leather and oak, and tastes of treacle toffee, creme brulé and toasted almonds.

A world record £29,400 was paid in 2007 for a 19th-century bottle of Bowmore single-malt whisky.

Sotheby's and Christie's are heading east to seek their respective fortunes. The two auction houses are offering more than $26 million of Asian art this week in London. The lots themselves are attracting record numbers of buyers from mainland China, a section of the market that has shown signs of life this year. Chinese buyers were quite active in Hong Kong last month.

Nicholas Chow of Sotheby's told Bloomberg News, ""We've seen a really aggressive push from mainland Chinese collectors during the last season of sales" and that "they're buying things at the very highest level." An Imperial jade seal, for example, moved for GBP3.6 million on Tuesday, six times the high-end presale estimate.

On November 3, Christie's sold an aggregate GBP5.7 million, beating the presale estimate of GBP5.2 million. Of the 319 lots, a third didn't move. The top seller was an eighteenth century enamel model of a Buddhist shrine, which beat its presale range of GBP60,000 to GBP80,000 with a hammer sale of GBP229,250. Nine of the top 10 most expensive items went to buyers from Asia.

Collectors from mainland China are quite eager to repatriate art and other objects from their heritage, particularly the Qing and Ming dynasties ... a fact of which the auction houses are fully aware. Christie's sent 210 invitations to mainland Chinese for its 12th annual Asian Art in London event, which ends November 7, 2009. Sotheby's pursued a similar number of collectors. Bonhams has invited 30 new buyers from mainland China.

In October, the Sotheby's Hong Kong art auction was good for $170 million, with plenty of bidding and buying by mainland Chinese buyers.

Bonhams & Butterfields tried to unload a dinosaur skeleton Saturday, but the piece was one of 17 lots that didn't move at the Natural History auction at the Venetian in Las Vegas. The auction house had originally hoped to pull in estimated $6 million for the 66-million-year-old bones of a 40-foot Tyronnosaurus Rex. In all, it was shooting for around $8 million in sales. Only 60 percent of the lots coming under the gavel sold.

The T. rex skeleton that nobody wanted (at least not at that price), named Samson, is the third most complete ever pulled from the ground, according to Thomas Lindgren, Co-Director of Natural History at Bonhams & Butterfields.

"'Samson'" is one of four known T. rex specimens which display characteristics that set it apart from other examples of the species," Lindgren continues. "In the dynamic science of paleontology, variation from one specimen to the next may indicate varying developmental phases, normal variations within a species, or it may represent the discovery of an entirely new species. As it stands, experts identify 'Samson' as Tyrannosaurus rex."

Samson was the first T. rex to come on the scene since 1997, when Sotheby's auctioned Sue, a dinosaur of similar size. The Field Museum in Chicago picked her up for a record $8.36 million – a price that still has not been topped. Sue is considered to be the largest and most complete T. rex ever excavated.

When times are tough, you don't spend when you don't have to. There's sufficient graffiti in London to keep art collectors entertained, which is causing them to shy away from works by Banksy. Larger auction houses have cut down on the Banksy works they are carrying, and some of the regional auction houses are canceling their urban art specialist sales.

It's hard to tell if Banksy is disappointed. The artist, who was born in Bristol (west England) keeps his (her?) identity a secret. So, if you see some weirdo crying in a corner over the next few weeks at a pub in Bristol (or, maybe, London), ask if it's Banksy. It could be cooler than finding Waldo.

Prices for pieces by Banksy have plunged this year, with failure rates on the rise. Auction houses are now sufficiently nervous to hedge their bets, carrying little (or no) inventory by the artist and canceling auctions that may not deliver.

In general, contemporary art auction selling points are down 30 percent to 50 percent – about as much as your 401(k). The top houses – Christie's, Sotheby's, Bonhams and Phillips de Pury – didn't carrying any of Banksy's work in their June or early July auctions. This year, 76 Banksy paintings and prints have come under the gavel, with 30 of them (almost half) not selling. The highest price reached was $230,500 at a New York Sotheby's event. Last year, the top price for a Banksy piece was $1.9 million at Sotheby's RED charity auction in February.

Classic car collectors in England have come to know Bonhams' auction at the old Aston Martin factory in Newport Pagnell as a significant event on the calendar. Always packed with a mouth-watering selection of classic Astons and Lagondas, the Works Service auction has raised some £14 million in sales over the past ten years. But this year the prospective bidders are in for another surprise: protestors.

Aston Martin moved its production facilities to a new factory in Gaydon two years ago, leaving the old historic Newport Pagnell facility to its classic maintenance and restoration division. But the Works Service only needs so much space, so part of the compound is earmarked to be converted into a Tesco supermarket. Historic automobile enthusiasts find this disgraceful, and intend to bring it to the attention of the marque's devotees this Saturday when they arrive for the auction, which will feature a rare 1970 Aston Martin DB6 Vantage Volante expected to fetch over half a million dollars. Follow the link for more information.

Once the undisputed land of conspicuous wealth and consumption, the United Arab Emirates is being squeezed by a large drop in oil prices. It's a shame this comes after the region's addiction to art has become fully entrenched. Sotheby's is planning its first contemporary art sale from its new Doha, Qatar branch on March 18, 2009 – also the opening day of the Art Dubai fair. Hell, it's enough to make you "scream" (see photo).

This looks like the triumph of ambition over common sense, but Sotheby's was probably too far into its Middle Eastern endeavors before the bottom fell out on the region's finances. And with Bonhams and Christie's already in town, Sotheby's had little choice but to follow.

The UAE has committed quickly to the art scene. Abu Dhabi is working on building a Louvre, and is erecting a Guggenheim. Last year, art auction revenues reached $34.9 million, up 70 percent from 2007. But, the upcoming auction should be tricky, particularly with the poor performance of the sector last fall in more established markets, like New York, London and Hong Kong.

In around two weeks, we'll see if Sotheby's will be able to make this new auction house work, or if it will fall victim to the greater recession-triggered decline in the art market. The Mei Moses All Art Index dropped 4.5 percent last year. This seems like a modest amount, but you need to remember that record-setting sales continued through the middle of the summer. Last May, Roman Abramovich was a billionaire with a new Francis Bacon piece in his collection. Today ... we know he feels pain, too. The second half of the year wiped out the first half's records and pulled prices down further.

It's a tough time to count on the market to make Sotheby's Doha a success, but the market doesn't give us choices.

[Photo: "El Grito" by Julio Aguilera]