Displaying items by tag: Wine

Christie’s held its first auction in Mainland China on Thursday, September 26, 2013. The sale included 39 paintings, sculpture, jewelry, watches and wine and garnered $24.9 million. A ruby and diamond necklace, which sold for $2.9 million was the top lot but failed to reach its high estimate of $4.6 million.

The modest sale marked the first time that an international auction house has been allowed to independently hold an auction in China. Christie’s received its license to conduct auctions in China in April and agreed not to sell any “cultural relics” dated before 1949 when the Communist Party took power.

China’s art market continues to grow at a rapid pace, making it an ideal location for international auction houses. The sale of art and antiques in China garnered $13.7 billion in 2012, making it the second largest market in the world behind the United States. The country’s strong buyer base has been active in Christie’s global auction centers in New York, London, Hong Kong, and Paris. In fact, the number of clients from Mainland China bidding at Christie’s international auctions has doubled since 2008. Christie’s presence in Shanghai will allow the auction house to sell directly to China’s growing number of wealthy buyers.  

China’s auction market is currently dominated by the country’s own Beijing Poly International and China Guardian. Sotheby’s joined forces with the state-owned Beijing GeHua Cultural Development Group last year to hold auctions in China. Sotheby’s own 80% of its venture with Beijing Gehua.

The art collection once belonging to the infamous Ponzi-schemer, Bernie Madoff, will be sold at Sotheby’s New York and Stair Galleries in Hudson, NY at the end of this year. The 61 works have an insured value in excess of $575,000. Securities Investor Protection Corporation trustee, Irving Picard, and the U.S. bankruptcy court are liquidating the assets, which include posters, rugs and fine art. Sotheby’s will be responsible for selling a large portion of the works and Stair Galleries will sell the remainder including posters, carpets and decorative items. The collection has been stored at Cirkers Fine Art Storage & Logistics in Manhattan since 2009.

While the majority of the lot is lackluster, there are a few important works including a lithograph by Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) illustrating a black bull, six bull lithographs by Roy Lichtenstein (1923-1997) and a small drawing of a woman’s head by Henri Matisse (1869-1954). There are also a number of works on paper by important postwar artists such as Jasper Johns (b. 1930), Andy Warhol (1928-1987), Frank Stella (b. 1936), Cy Twombly (1928-2011) and Ellsworth Kelly (b 1933). The sale will also include a pair of oriental rugs that once decorated Madoff’s offices in Manhattan and Queens.

Picard has been working to liquidate Madoff’s assets since the disgraced financier’s arrest in 2008. To date, he has collected about $9.3 billion to compensate the people and companies that Madoff defrauded. Picard has overseen the sales of three powerboats, various cars, jewelry, pianos and Madoff’s wine collection.

The German startup, Auctionata, sold Egon Schiele’s (1890-1918) Reclining Woman (1916) for $2.3 million, breaking the record for any artwork sold as part of an online auction. The company, which is less than a year old, auctioned the watercolor on Friday, June 21, 2013 via webcast. The online auction record was previously help by Andy Warhol (1928-1987) whose Flowers series garnered $1.3 million in 2011.

Auctionata, which is helmed by Alexander Zacke, a former Ebay advisor, is planning to expand its online auction offerings to include various categories such as jewels, classic cars, wine and fine art. Along with holding weekly auctions, the company is hoping to establish an online showroom in New York City.

Auctionata currently employs around 250 people including specialists, curators and appraisers. Besides its online auction platform, the website boasts an online store where visitors can purchase antique or special items at their leisure.

Heritage Auctions, which is based in Dallas, TX, has announced that they will be expanding their New York City office. The company has leased over 5,000-square-feet of additional space next to their current Park Avenue location. The expansion, which has tripled the auction house’s space in New York, will include an area for private sales, a showroom for exhibiting auction highlights, and a saleroom for small, on-site auctions. Heritage will continue to hold their larger sales at the Fletcher Sinclair mansion across from the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Heritage, which was established in 1976, is currently the largest auction house specializing in collectibles such as rare coins, civil war memorabilia, fine and rare wine, and rare books and manuscripts. The auction house brought in around $900 million in sales last year.

On Tuesday, April 9, 2013, Christie’s announced that they have been granted a license allowing them to hold independent auctions in Mainland China, making them the first international auction house to do so. The company’s inaugural sale will be held autumn 2013 in Shanghai. Christie’s has been building its relationship with China since 1994 when the auction house set up a representative office in Shanghai.

China’s art market continues to grow at a rapid pace, making it an ideal location for international auction houses. The sale of art and antiques in China garnered $13.7 billion in 2012, making it the second largest market in the world behind the United States. The country’s strong buyer base has been active in Christie’s global auction centers in New York, London, Hong Kong, and Paris. In fact, the number of clients from Mainland China bidding at Christie’s international auctions has doubled since 2008. Christie’s presence in Shanghai will allow the auction house to sell directly to China’s growing number of wealthy buyers.  

China’s auction market is currently dominated by the country’s own Beijing Poly International and China Guardian. Sotheby’s joined forces with the state-owned Beijing GeHua Cultural Development Group last year to hold auctions in China. Sotheby’s own 80% of its venture with Beijing Gehua.

Christie’s recently granted license, which is good for the next 30 years, allows the auction house to hold sales anywhere in China, but prohibits the company from selling anything created before 1949. Christie’s plans to sell wine, jewelry, watches, contemporary Chinese paintings, and international modern paintings starting this fall.

Eight days after global equity markets lost $3.5 trillion in a week, Sotheby’s (BID) begins a Hong Kong sale of wine, art and jewels that will test the strength of China’s growing market for luxury goods.

It takes 12 catalogs weighing a total of 30 pounds (13.6 kilograms) to detail the 3,400 lots of Qing porcelain, Chateau Lafite wines, Chinese art and jade necklaces that New York-based Sotheby’s forecasts will help draw more than HK$2.7 billion ($347 million). Stocks have increased on hopes for a euro-region rescue fund, and the volatility won’t put off wealthy bidders from China, according to art dealers such as Stuart Marchant.

“The market is very strong,” said Marchant, a London- based dealer of fine Chinese porcelain who bought three pieces at Sotheby’s April sale in Hong Kong. “There are probably going to be a lot of mainland buyers.”

The six-day sale, featuring four private collections and an auction of the Rothschild family’s Bordeaux wines shipped straight from the Lafite cellars, comes as global equities and commodities are poised for their worst quarterly losses since 2008 amid concern Greece will default on its debt, tipping the world economy into a recession.

Sotheby’s autumn sale, including watches, jewelry and traditional Chinese paintings, has 200 fewer lots than its April auction in the city, which took a record HK$3.49 billion, compared with an estimate of HK$2.7 billion, the auction house said. The star lot in the spring sale, an 18th Century Chinese vase worth more than $23 million, failed to find a buyer.

Lafite Imperials

The latest series starts on Oct. 1 with rare wines, including six-liter Imperials of Chateau Lafite Rothschild from 2000 that are expected to sell for as much as $20,000 each and three liter jeroboams of Cristal champagne from the cellars of a private American collector worth $6,000.

Domaine de la Romanee-Conti burgundy wines from 1988 costing as much as $10,000 for a standard 75 centiliter bottle will be offered the following day.

Jamie Ritchie, the head of Sotheby’s Asian wine sales, said he is keeping his fingers crossed that the auction house will achieve another sell-out auction in Hong Kong, where it hasn’t had an unsold bottle in its last 15 sales.

Debra Meiburg, a Master of Wine who attended a private tasting of Bordeaux from 2000 yesterday hosted by Sotheby’s, says demand for classic French reds remains resilient.

Surging demand for Chateau Lafite and other French trophy labels, especially from Asia, has pushed both prices at auction and wine futures to records. Not all wine dealers are happy.

The prices for some of the most expensive bottles are starting to discourage even billionaire collectors, said dealers -- some of whom had warned in January of a bubble that could burst in 2011. Chinese and other buyers balked as some Bordeaux producers raised prices as much as 80 percent last month for the new vintage offered “en primeur,” when it is still in barrels.

“En primeur sales have halved,” Simon Staples, fine wine and marketing director of the London-based merchants Berry Bros & Rudd, said in an interview. “It’s a combination of high prices and the fact that the chateaux released less than last year.”

Sales growth is also slowing at auctions. Takings at the biggest three wine auction houses in the first six months of 2011 were up by 46 percent on the same period in 2010, according to Bloomberg calculations, down from the 88 percent sales increase in 2010.

The Liv-ex Fine Wine 50 index, tracking daily price movements of the 10 most recent vintages of Bordeaux’s five First Growth chateaux, declined from 445.49 points on July 1 to 434.17 points on Aug. 1. The London-based index, based on trade sales, rose 136.67 points to 401.11 last year.

The future sale prices were boosted by scores of more than 90 for the vintage from the critic Robert Parker.

Futures Increase

Chateau Latour 2010 was released at 780 euros ($1,106) a bottle, a 30 percent increase on the also highly rated 2009 vintage. Chateau Ausone was pitched at 1,120 euros a bottle, 17 percent higher than last year. The 108 euros being charged for bottles of Carruades de Lafite -- the second wine of Chateau Lafite -- was a 59 percent increase.

Last year, Asian buyers snapped up a third of the Berry Bros. Bordeaux 2009 futures allocation. Only 5 percent of the merchant’s 2010 wines have gone to the region, Staples said.

“The 2009 vintage was the first that attracted a lot of Chinese en primeur investment,” said Staples. “They’ve seen it has really increased in value and have been put off by the prices of the 2010s. If it isn’t in a bottle, they can’t show it off to their friends.”

Chinese consumers continue to spend millions on older vintages in bottles at specialist auctions. Sotheby’s (BID), Christie’s International and Acker, Merrall & Condit took a record $258.3 million in wine sales in 2010, more than double 2009. About two-thirds of the most expensive lots were selling to Asian bidders, according to both Christie’s and Acker.