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.

The U.S. ban against the importation of rubies and jade from Mynanmar is now official. President Bush signed legislation Tuesday hoping to send a strong message to Myanmar's brutal ruling regime. While many jewelry companies including Tiffany & Co., Cartier and Bulgari already have had bans in place for a while, this bill makes it official. The U.S. government was particularly motivated to move after military junta's reaction to the cyclone that hit the country in May. The regime was slow to accept help and and the country is still in recovery from that devastating event. First lady Laura Bush has spoken out on the issue of a ban against rubies from Myanmar before and she accompanied her husband in the Oval Office as he signed the bills, which extend and harden sanctions Congress first passed in 2003.

Myanmar, formerly known as Burma, produces some of the world's most beautiful rubies. The rubies from the Mogok region have a deep translucent color often described as pigeon's blood. As the AP article notes, many stones are currently being laundered through nearby countries such as Thailand to get around sanctions. Myanmar also does a brisk business in jade and jadeite which is continuing to be bought merchants coming from China and Hong Kong who purchase the stones in state-run auctions held periodically.

Ana De Costa is another young jewelry designer making a name for herself rather quickly. She graduated from Central St. Martins in 2005 and her graduate collection, Cusp, was made 'The Vogue List' in late 2005 and is sold in top boutiques. April's W magazine names her a young designer to watch highlighting this piece from her Cusp II collection, a jade pendant embraced by an 18K yellow gold dragon with a green diamond eye. De Costa may be a young designer but she has a love of the old stuff, she cites the designs of the 1920s and Art Nouveau as primary influences. The dragon pendant sells for £4,200. It's precisely the sort of piece that should be dangling in the cleavage of a villainess in a noir movie.

When you have a jade cong as your base you pretty much can't go wrong with your lamp. This luminous lamp from Spaltana is made from a solid jade cong, a Chinese jade artifact which is square on the outside and circular on the interior. The four corners of the cong represent the four elements of water, fire, metal and wood and the four directions. The circular interior represents the connection to the sky. The Spaltana lamps are made of veined dark green jade and each pillar has a decorative motif carved in each of the four corners. The jade cong sits on a poplar base and the lamp shade is made from pongee silk. These rare table lamps sell for $1800.

A company called Newbert Revolution claims to be selling the world's most expensive soap. They are a bit off, we've seen at least one pricier bar but Neprhira is still worthy of noting at least for curiosity's sake. It is created from nephrite (jade powder) along with apricot, olive and jojoba oils. The jade comes from a special seam in South Korea which is said to have healing properties which improve the skin's moisture and lipid balance and have a calming effect on skin problems such as inflammation and acne.The Nephria Jade Beauty Bar costs £17.99 (around $35).