Displaying items by tag: Auction

Sotheby’s will offer the 12.03 carat Blue Moon Diamond, among the largest known fancy vivid blue diamonds at part of its Magnificent Jewels and Noble Jewels in Geneva on November 11.

A blue diamond is created when boron is mixed with carbon during the gem’s formation. Graded Fancy Vivid Blue – the highest possible colour grading for blue diamonds, the cushion brilliant-cut stone has been declared Internally Flawless by the GIA and carried an estimate of $ 35-55 million.

Audrey Irmas, a longtime donor to Los Angeles art museums and Jewish causes, will sell a large 1968 “blackboard” painting by Cy Twombly that she's owned since 1990 and use $30 million of the predicted auction proceeds of more than $60 million to help build a new events center at the Wilshire Boulevard Temple in Koreatown.

The 55,000-square-foot Audrey Irmas Pavilion will be designed by the Office for Metropolitan Architecture, the firm led by noted Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas.

Christie's and Sotheby's jump-started the fall season last week with announcements of respective blockbuster consignments including a $100 million Modigliani nude and the roughly $500 million collection of illustrious former Sotheby's chairman A. Alfred Taubman's estate.

According to the 8-K SEC filing Sotheby's made on September 9, the publicly traded auction house is betting big on the $500 million Taubman collection, having given estate overseer and Taubman's son Robert a financial guarantee "for the collection at approximately that level." The SEC Filing was first flagged by the Art Market Monitor's Marion Maneker in a post this morning.

Supporters of the Detroit Institute of Arts reacted with dismay Thursday to Sotheby’s announcement that it will auction A. Alfred Taubman’s legendary art collection, as that means it will not go to the museum.

Sotheby’s statement said the 500-plus works “valued in excess of $500 million” will be on the block in four auctions starting Nov. 4 in New York. The news release called it “the most valuable private collection ever offered at auction.”

Christie’s auction house in New York will be selling Amedeo Modigliani’s Nu couché (Reclining Nude) at a special evening sale of 20th century art on Monday, November 9, organized around the theme of “The Artist’s Muse.” The auction will kick off the November sales week, and will be Christie’s attempt to rival its success at the auctions last May, when Christie’s made $1.7 billion in sales over the course of one week.

Fine gray pearl necklaces are rarely seen at auction, making the auction of the Cowdray Pearls one of the most exciting highlights of Sotheby’s Hong Kong jewelry sale.

With an estimate of $4.5‑7 million, the necklace was formerly in the collection of Viscountess Cowdray, Lady Pearson (1860‑1932) and was strung and mounted by Cartier. It comprises 42 natural gray saltwater pearls well-matched in luster, shape, and size, and is accompanied by a pair of natural gray pearl earrings, also by Cartier London.

The colorful, stained-glass effect decor items produced by Tiffany Studios represent some of the most beautiful and quintessential specimens of pre-war design such as the Oriental Poppy lamp, which sold for $1.1 million at Sotheby’s in New York this past May. As a painter, Louis Comfort Tiffany was fascinated with the interplay of light and color, and using opalescent glass as his canvas, created masterful renderings of nature — such as flowers or landscape scenes — and decorative geometric patterns in lampshades and leaded-glass windows that popped with color and texture.

On December 2, 2015, selected items from the most comprehensive private collection of Song ceramics ever to appear at auction will be offered for sale at Christie’s Hong Kong. Carefully assembled over three decades by a distinguished Japanese collector, The Linyushanren Collection is comprised of exquisite examples created during the Song dynasty (960-1279), encompassing some of the most important kiln sites active across China at the time.

The highlight of the 36-lot sale is a very rare Ge foliate dish dating from the Southern Song Dynasty (1127-1279). It was shown in the seminal 1952 exhibition dedicated to Chinese ceramics by the Los Angeles Museum, and was once owned by the famous collector Stephen Junkunc, III (Estimate on Request).

The fashion designer Yves Saint Laurent once declared of his partner Pierre Bergé: “The world will talk about a Goût Bergé, just as it speaks of a Goût Noailles.”

As the $484 million auction of the couple’s art collection at Christie’s in 2009 can attest to, this “Bergé taste” is the epitome of a keen eye, and a penchant for objects with great history and pedigree. Over the next two years, more examples of Bergé’s fine collectibles are scheduled to go under the hammer in Paris, this time at Sotheby’s — in the form of 1,600 precious books, manuscripts and musical scores from his personal library that date from the 15th to the 20th century.