Hong Kong auction sets Sotheby’s record

Hong Kong’s growing status as an international auction centre received a strong boost on Thursday after Sotheby’s said its spring sale in the city was the biggest ever in its 37 years in the former British colony.

In the six-day sale of wine, art and jewellery that ended on Thursday, the auctioneer raised $256m (£168m, €192m), double the estimate, as mainland Chinese buyers bid aggressively for many of the 2,400 lots.

“What made this sale series groundbreaking in many ways was the growing involvement and participation by mainland Chinese,” said Kevin Ching, chief executive of Sotheby’s Asia.

Thanks to their growing economic prowess, mainland buyers have dominated Hong Kong auctions in the past few years, especially in buying Chinese antiques and gems. Increasingly, they are also outbidding collectors in London and New York and buying items beyond Chinese works of art.

While Sotheby’s declined to disclose how much of its Hong Kong spring sales came from Chinese buyers, persistent mainland collectors were seen raising their paddles for many top lots.

They showed particularly keen interest for Chinese ceramics and works of art, the biggest category of the whole Sotheby’s sales where a white jade Qianlong period seal was sold for $12.3m and an 18th century court pearl necklace fetched $8.7m.

For Sotheby’s and rival Christie’s, Hong Kong is the world’s third biggest auction market after New York and London, where sales are generally larger.

At Christie’s autumn sale in Hong Kong last year, mainland buyers bought the most expensive items in six of the 11 categories.

Sotheby’s previous biggest sale in Hong Kong was the spring auction in April 2008, before the financial crisis, when it made $227m.

One category where Chinese collectors were less keen was jewellery. On Wednesday, London-based Moussaieff Jewellers bought a 5.16-carat blue diamond ring for $6.4m.

Meanwhile, Reuters reports that Christie’s has said it will offer an important painting by Norway’s Edvard Munch at its May 4 New York sale of impressionist and modern art, which the auctioneer expects to fetch $25m to $35m, .

Underlining how confidence has surged back into the art market since the global financial crisis, the estimate suggests that Fertility, painted in the late 1890s, could break the auction record for the artist of $38.2m set in 2008. That level was set at rival Sotheby’s by Vampire.