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.

Hong Kong will come to life with the sound of a gavel on Tuesday, October 6, 2009. Sotheby's will be holding its Modern and Contemporary Asian Art auction, which will consist of three sessions: 20th Century Chinese Art, Modern and Contemporary Southeast Asian Paintings and Contemporary Asian Art. More than 380 works by Asian artists will come to auction, and the house expects close to $25 million in sales. Beyond bringing some new cash into Sotheby's, the auction is likely to give a sign as to the strength of the market, particularly with the November sales following shortly. Christie's will be holding its Hong Kong auctions on November 29 and 30.

In a sense, this is the one-year point for the art auction market. It was a year ago – in Hong Kong – that the world saw the effects of the financial crisis unfold in the art market. So, this bit of trivia will be front-of-mind as bidders make tough decisions on which pieces to acquire.

Sotheby's is betting big on the Contemporary Asian Art category, hoping that 190 lots will bring in $12.5 million in sales. High-profile artists are represented, including Guogiang Cai, Minjn Yue and Zhengjie Feng. There will be 130 lots in the Modern and Contemporary Southeast Asian Paintings auction, including I Nyoman Masriadi's The man from Bantul, The Monster, which is estimated at $100,000. The 20th Century Chinese Art category has a mix of safe and speculative pieces.

It's International Asia Week in New York City from March 12 to March 18 and Berry-Hill Galleries is holding an exhibition of Traditional and Modern Masters. The exhibit spans the Heian to the Meiji Periods (12th to early 20th centuries), showcasing Buddhist sculptures, ceramics, lacquer objects, folding screens, and hanging scrolls by leading masters.

A presentation of works by modern lacquer artist Shigenobu Mochizuki also accompanies the exhibition. He creates hollow-dry lacquer objects (urushi) through a painstaking process that involves building up layers of lacquer over a plaster mold and then removing this core, and treating the surface with vermillion and black lacquer. This process can take up to 6 months to complete for a single work.

Shown above is on the left is a seated figure of Buddhist divinity, Dainichi Nyorai, executed in wood with polychrome pigments and dating to the 14th century. On the right is a standing Amida Nyorai from the late Heian period dated to the 12th century. The exhibition will be open Thursday, March 12 –Wednesday, March 18, 10:00 am-6:00 pm, Saturday, 12 noon-8 pm, Sunday, 12 noon-6:00 pm. Inaugural Open House, March 14th, 12 noon –8:00 pm. Berry-Hill Galleries are located at 11 East 70th Street, New York, NY, 10021.

Another sign of the jittery art market this week (you know it's bad when I don't even realize I've used the word gloomy as a descriptor twice in a row) was the pulling of a major piece of Asian art before its auction at Sotheby's. For weeks, Sotheby's had been promoting its November 5th Asian Art auction in London and in specific a large and very rare gilt bronze figure of the bodhisattva Avalokitesvara which dates back to the Xuande Period and is dated 1435. The piece was expected to bring in at least £2.5 million. The statue was withdrawn on the morning of the sale by the Scottish family that owns it. After the withdrawal, the sale that was expected to bring in at least £6 million only brought in 3.3 million pounds with fees, with about two thirds of the lots selling. Bloomberg quotes Robert Bradlow, head of Sotheby's Chinese department in London as saying that the sellers felt it had to be withdrawn because of the state of the market.

The Sotheby's sale was part of the 11th annual Asian Art in London,which continues through Nov. 12. Reports from the sales overall reveal that buyers are currently cautious and not willing to pay a lot for pieces, fearing that in six months or a year the prices could slide even further. But some pieces are still selling well. At Christie's, a Chinese yellow jade belt hook sold for £825,250 pounds setting a record for any archaic jade carving and soaring above the estimate of £100,000 to £150,000. Both auctioneers and dealers are finding it hard to sell more routine items, buyers either want something special and rare or nothing at all.