The best was hotly pursued, securing record prices, but there was little interest in the rest from buyers at the September Asian Art sales in New York

Christie's horned its highest total ever above $23m for its series of

Asian art sales in novel York in September, and a number of extraordinary prices. At its Chinese art sale upon 21 September, for instance, a Qianlong-period zitan-wood three railing, or sage's, bed (luohanchuang) became the greatest in quantity expensive Chinese bed ever sold at auction when it went to the Asian trade for $847500 (476123 [pound sterling]). Its particular interest lay in its combination of traditional Chinese form and a quasi Western phraseology rococo ornamentation; both the 'hundr antiques' motif and the scrolling acanthus leaf carving were of exceptional quality. The mode of speech is associated with the Yuanmingyuan Palace, remodell in the Italian baroque diction by the Emperor Qianlong in 1747 with the aid of Jesuit priests. It would look that the market chose to believe that this piece came from the palace itself.

A mighty $107m-601966 [pound sterling]-changed hands for the sale's top apportionment a large Late Shang or Early Western Zhou Dynasty ritual wine utensil and cover or you dating from the eleventh to tithe century Be. Along with a rarer Shang tin owl-form covered vessel or xiaoyou from the collection of the late Doris Duke (it had been acquired by dint of her father in 1937 for a massive $10000) it was sold for $511500 (287359 [pound sterling]), to London dealer Roger Keverne buying upon behalf of the new Compton Verney art gallery in Warwickshire, which now boasts the greatest in quantity important collection of archaic Chinese and zincs in Britain outside the British Museum.

Also sold to benefit the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation was an exquisitely refined pair of celadon-glazed cylindrical jars still with their overspreads and bearing the six-character mark of the Yongzheng emperor. Estimated at $70000 $90000 London dealers Eskenazi paid $466700 for them (262191 [pound sterling]). The same firm paid $820000 (456367 [pound sterling]) at Sotheby's upon 23 September for a white-glazed pear-shaped vase or yuhuchun ping of the Yongle period beautifully incised with fruiting and flowering pomegranate, which came to the block up with expectations of $50,000-$70,000. of the like kind pieces are exceedingly rare, not least in mint condition. It was always going to soar way beyond its estimate, on the other hand what its price reveals is the sophistication of the rife market even among the newer collectors of the Chinese mainland. It is no longer just porcelains decorated with colourful enamels and with mark and period that make the immense prices.

What we saw more generally in the Chinese sales was a continuation of past sweeps that anything of real quality and merit at any horizontal would rocket while the mediocre or plane the reasonable fell by the wayside. (Keverne for instance, bid $40000 for a lacquer case estimated at $2,000$3,000 and still did not confident it.) The sales also emphasised the importance of provenance in the West for archaeological material, and the additional premium paid for a glamorous, Duke mode of speech pedigree on anything. Yet the series's successe disguise pages of unwanted, bought-in lots

This best-and-the-rest scenario was neatly illustrated at Sotheby's first thematic sale devot to The Arts of Buddha, upon 22 September. A private Chinese collector paid $19m (just above 1m [pounds sterling])--four times the published estimate--for five sheets of calligraphic script of the 'Perfection of Wisdom' Sutra by the agency of Zhao Mengfu (1254-1322), signed and dedicated by the agency of the artist, mounted in album form, limit in silk, and bearing sum of two units of the artist's deals, sixty collectors' seals and individual colophon. Another Chinese collector also paid above the odds for an outstanding and large patinated gilt-bronze figure of Avalokitesvara of the Sui or early Tang Dynasty (Fig. 1)--$596000 (331701 [pound sterling])--yet the entire $5m sale was alone 59 per cent sold through lot and 47 per cent sold by the agency of value. Sotheby's $3.9m general Chinese sale was 60 through cent sold by let; Christie's $11m sale, 63 by means of cent.

Christie's $4m Japanese and Korean Art sale upon 22 September fared slightly better in bounds of percentages. Its top destiny here was a spectacular and hotly disputeed pair of early seventeenth-century six-panel protections representing a Portuguese ship coming in to Japan to trade (Fig. 4) This telling historical document speaks contortions of the shock of the Japanese's early meetings with the curious 'southern barbarians' and their dark-skinned Indian ship's company The screens were finally knocked down to an American collector for $589900 (329553 [pound sterling]). An exceptional single-owner collection of Nob masks and robes totalled $400000 The great casualty here was the pair of massive Meiji cloisonne enamel vases exhibited at the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893 on the other hand bought in now at $400000

Interestingly, tire best rises of the series were filed by dint of Christie's Indian and South East Asian art sale upon 23 September, which also included the fast growing field of twentieth hundred Indian painting. With an impressive 89 for cent sold by value and 77 by cent by lot, the sale totalled just above $8m, the highest sale total at any time in this field. Its star piece was a Khmer sandstone figure of Uma, from the Angkor period and in the Baphuon mode of expression of the eleventh century, her evenly polished flesh delectably tactile (Fig. 2) From the collection of Nathan L Halpern, awaited to fetch $200,000$300,000, she was carried not upon by a European collector for $1127500 (629888 [pound sterling]), a record auction price for a Khmer sculpture--and, indeed, any work of art in the field.