London Bonhams auction.July 20, 2005

Bonhams result list
On July20, 2005 at Bonhams London the auction was very expensive.

The Charles Milton fine collection of items was proposed starting at lot 191 to 227. He was a painter and textile designer. He also illustrated many of the pieces he bought.

Many of those pieces where once sold by the Arcade gallery .
The nicest pieces went for a multiple of the estimates to the Brussels dealers, like the nice Bakongo maternity 10,2 cm high that was estimated 2000 pounds and sold for 28,800 pounds (lot191).

Bakongo image

Or the fine Yaure mask 33.7cm from the cover that sold to another Brussels dealer for £16,800. Like many of these pieces they where purchased from H.F. Rieser at the end of the fifities and Exhibited "An Exhibition of Baule Sculptures Arcade Gallery, spring 1979"

Bonhams organises the only specialist Tribal sales in London, and remained on the market while Sotheby's and Christies left many years ago. Prices for African art remain strong when pieces are well selected and witha good provenance.

Last year I came back from London with 60 kg, this year I only got 4 pieces in my backpack: a nephrite Tiki, a north West coast staff, a small Ashanti coming from the Mestach collection, and a Lega Bwami figure with monkey hair. I was outbidded for most other items I liked.

New Ekiti on buyAfricanantiques

Ekiti: "Ekiti
A fine small old Ekiti cup bearer statue.Yoruba people, Ekiti region. "

Newsletter July 05

July05: "Dear reader,
Lega Lukungu Lega Ivory, 20 cm high, sold for 2.4 Million EUROS
http://users.telenet.be/african-shop/records_ventes.htm

This month, I have put www.African-Antiques.com in some summer clothes,

The month of June has been very active, with seven auctions in Paris and several records broken, like the Lega Ivory that sold in Paris for two and a half million Euros. Fine quality, good provenance and fresh pieces on the markets are still the rules of the game for fetching high prices.

Bruneaf had more dealers and visitors than ever. Also contemporary art now gets attention and increased public interest expressed itself in high prices paid for work by contemporary African Artists like Ch?ri Samba.

Tell me if you bought some treasures that you want to share in the discussion group with it's 887 members and nearly 11,000 past messages. Or, if you speak French, join Antiques Africaine (125 members) and show us the favorite antique pieces in your collection.

I made my blog public at http://africanantiques.blogspot.com
If you already have an RSS reader you can use http://africanantiques.blogspot.com/atom.xml an Atom-formatted XML site feed to read the next newsletters and my ?in?between? ideas. The feed is intended to be viewed in a Newsreader or syndicated to another site. You can see the blog at http://africanantiques.blogspot.com

In July I invite you to go to Monaco to see 250 African masterpieces from ancient times to the present.

Enjoy the sun, enjoy the reading...

David Norden.


Exhibitions.
Monaco ?Arts of Africa? is an invitation to the heart of the African continent and its artistic expression in the broadest sense. July 16 -September 4, 2005
For the first time on 4,"