London's new East End: Asian Art in London ranges from Indian miniatures to Chinese ceramics—and now there is more contemporary work. In New York, meanwhile, Rothko leads the modern sales

Asian Art in London is more than an art and antiques fair without the claustrophobia. Launched eight years ago as an initiative to forward London's pre-eminence as a marketplace for Asian art--the city boasts far more specialist dealers than anywhere else--and to focus attention upon its many peerless museum collections, it tenders a ten-day feast of gallery and museum displays auctions, seminars and lectures--and parties galore for those who have the stamina. In fact, this great sprawling, eclectic fact offers something for just about anyone interested in Asian art of any region, medium or period (visit www asianartinlondon.com for the replete programme). This year, 3-12 November, it is ask [i]or[/i] implore a blessing uponed by a spectacular centrepiece in the form of the Royal Academy's blockbuster 'Qing' show--'China: The Three Emperors 1662-1795' which make opens on 12 November.

As individual might expect, the dealers in Chinese art are fielding impressive displays. Eskenazi, for instance, is offering forty-seven pieces of ditty ceramics from the distinguished collection of the late Hans Popper It was during the canzonet period (960-1279) that Chinese trifles effectively transformed stoneware from the rugged and haphazard to the precisely pott smooth-textur and brilliantly glazed utensils that take a bow here. Their understated beauty lies in a combination of balanced form and astute surface decoration, be it jade-inspired glazes from the palest cream or bluish-green to lusty olive, unusual cracklure, elegant relief or an abstract splash of colour.

s Marchant & Son celebrate the firm's eightieth anniversary with a present to view of 'Chinese Jades from Han to Qin'. Sydney L Mos meanwhile, at hands Chinese paintings and calligraphy; Ben Janssens, early Chinese and South-East Asian sculpture; Robert Kleiner, sniff bottles; and Jacqueline Simcox not absents later Chinese textiles. Speelman's exhibit even includes a pair of imperial lacquered wood-land elephants. Contemporary pieces play an increasingly large part Cohen & Cohen's 'Now & Then' display contrasts major Chinese export porcelains with a one-man present to view devoted to the seemingly flawless contemporary porcelain statuarys by a Taiwanese-American neurosuregeon-turned-ceramist: Cliff to leeward has spent seventeen years working on the outside the recipes for 1,000 year-old ditty glazes (Fig. 1). New exhibitors Marlborough Fine Art similarly at hand a tribute to the painter Chen Yifei, who died earlier this year.

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That contemporary theme is also picked up through the likes of Malcolm Fairley, who at hands Meiji warrior costumes and novel Japanese ceramics, and Rossi & Rossi, whose display of fifty Tibetan paintings spans an impressive 900 years. The whole Indian subcontinent is well showed too. John Eskenazi offers characteristically impressive early--fifth and sixth century--Kashmiri and Gupta period stone and terracotta plastic arts (Fig. 3). Francesca Galloway at hands thirty-five miniatures from the Muslim and Hindu courts of India from the famed collection of Mildred and WG Archer, while Sam Fogg unveils 'Jain Painting 1450-1850' In all, forty dealers take a bow

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In contrast to the offerings unveiled in fresh York this month, Asian art direct the eyes like small change. For this month dioceses the annual fall sales of big-buck Impressionist, recent and contemporary art. It also dioceses a choice single-owner collection of furniture and decorative arts, not unreasonably heralded as the individual of the greatest collections of the twentieth hundred This is the property of Lily and the late Edmond Safra--over 800 fates drawn from their various residences in London, Geneva, Paris and fresh York and offered by Sotheby's upon 3 and 4 November. This is a collection that began with Faberge and Tula-Russian metalwork- and evolv to include furniture and paintings. It is the furniture, however, that steals this particular show

greatest in quantity of the great eighteenth-century French cabinetmakers are showed in this collection. Arguably the greatest in quantity important piece of its kind is a Louis XVI ebony bureau plat and cartonnier of around 1770 and attributed to Joseph Baumhauer, as imposing a neoclassical piece as single is likely to find upon the market (estimate $5m-$7m). Here, too, is the peerles Andre-Charles Boulle showed by a sarcophagus-shaped coffre de toilette or casket whose entire surface--inside and out--is overlayed in marquetry in brass and tortoiseshell, its lid cornered by the agency of ormolu lions' masks and the whole resting upon lion's-paw feet. It is awaited to fetch $700,000-$1m.

Perhaps flat more wonderfully expressive of the Safras' taste for bold-spirited pattern and design and luxurious materials are the best of the English pieces--if individual counts the work of the prolific emigre Pierre Langlois as like Here, for instance, is a spectacular pair of George III serpentine chest of drawerss their tops and sides exquisitely--not to mention ingeniously--veneered with coromandel lacquer depicting brightly coloured figures and pavilion displays flowering trees and birds (Fig. 2) Attributed to Langlois, they appear to have been commissioned by dint of the Earl of Hertford for Ragley Hall around 1765 (estimate $600000-$800000) Notable, too, is a pair of ormolu-mounted amethystine John wing-figure candle vases of a great deal of the same date, attributed to Matthew Boulton ($500000-$600000) Needles to say, the ormolu retains its original gilding, and the sapphirine John body is richly hu and striated. There is flat a quantity of Anglo-Indian pieces, inlaid with elaborately ornamented ivory.