Buyers were reluctant to make expensive purchases at this week’s Asian Art in London promotion, dealers said, after a £2.5-million ($3.95 million) Buddha was withdrawn on the morning of Sotheby’s November 5 auction of Chinese works of art.
The 2-foot, 6-inch high Ming Dynasty statue, entered by a Scottish family, was the most valuable piece in a catalog that Sotheby’s had expected would raise at least £6 million. After the piece was withdrawn, the 341-lot sale fetched £3.3 million with fees, with 67 per cent of the material finding buyers. No work sold for more than £200,000.
“The sellers felt it had to be withdrawn because of the state of the market,” said Robert Bradlow, head of Sotheby’s Chinese department in London. “When we first took in the piece, it was a totally different situation. We’re in the first phase of a change.”
Sotheby’s was one of three auction houses and nearly 50 commercial galleries offering works during the 11th annual Asian Art in London, running through November 12. The event came at a time when losses on the world’s stock markets and contracting economic growth have begun to reduce sales of Asian art.
“There is still demand for high-quality works, but at a price,” said Giuseppe Eskenazi, whose Mayfair gallery specialises in Chinese art. He said at the moment collectors were hesitant to pay more than £200,000 for pieces.
“They know that prices may well fall over the next six months and they’re prepared to wait,” said Eskenazi, who added that collectors were also aware that the pound was sliding in value against other currencies.
Eskenazi said that, after a slow start, three-quarters of the 16 works in his November exhibition had sold. A US collector paid about £140,000 for two Tang Dynasty glazed earthenware figures of horses and riders, he said.
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The most valuable works offered by dealers at Asian Art in London were two Ming Dynasty red-lacquer trays, priced at about £2 million to £3 million, by the Mayfair gallery A & J Speelman.
Both were still available at the time of writing. An 18th-century Chinese green jade brushpot offered by fellow Mayfair dealer Roger Keverne at £250,000 was also still waiting for a buyer.
“The market is cautious, but resilient,” said Keverne. “We are a little bit down on last year, though.” Keverne said he had sold around 20 pieces during Asian Art in London for prices up to £50,000.
The outstanding auction price of the week was the £825,250 with fees paid at Christie’s International on November 4 for a Chinese yellow jade belt hook catalogued as dating from the Western Han period, 206 BC to 8 AD. The result was a record for any archaic jade carving, said the auction house.
Estimated at £100,000 to £150,000, the shield-shaped hook had been owned by the deceased German collectors, Baron and Baroness von Oertzen. It was bought by an anonymous buyer underbid by a private collector in Shanghai bidding on the internet, said Christie’s.
Christie’s 258-lot auction fetched 5.3 million pounds with fees against a pre-sale estimate of £3.3 million to £4.8 million. Sixty-eight per cent of the material successfully found buyers.
“People have become more selective,” said Christie’s London-based Chinese art specialist Ruben Lien. “Things need to have a good provenance because buyers are scared of fakes. And they have to be sensibly estimated. Sellers are going to have to be more flexible.”