The Market: The Solid-Gold Hammer

Investors prefer the tangible gilt edges that frame art works to paper ones on stock exchanges these days. As a result, the world’s auction houses started off the new season this month with a bang, despite a credit squeeze in the U.S., an economic freeze in Great Britain and a sagging Paris Bourse.

In London, Sotheby’s sold a set of seven Chinese Chippendale mahogany dining chairs for $4,480, up 50% since last February. Porcelain prices zoomed as an early Chelsea scolopendrium tea pot sold for $10,640, an increase of 230% in four years. A Toulouse-Lautrec print, La Grande Loge, garnered the highest price yet paid for a modern print: $15,400, more than double its 1959 value. Sotheby’s was jammed for the sale, and their suave hammerman, Peter Wilson, who knows everybody in the London art world by sight, said, “I’d never seen half the people before.”

Sotheby’s rival in London, Christie’s, began its 200th season with sales of old wines and steam engine and ship models. The exquisite toys brought $1 15,556 in a day; a bottle of Chateau Pichon-Longueville 1878 brought more than $5 a glass. In such a heady atmosphere, Christie’s now expects that Peter Paul Rubens’ The Judgment of Paris, which they first appraised as a $280 copy by Lankrink (TIME, Sept. 16), will top $225,000 when it goes on the block next month. Another newly discovered Rubens, an oil sketch for his Samson and Delilah, will join it for an estimated $140,000. Henry Ford II will take profits on Christie’s block in December by selling off four works by Matisse, Signac, Vuillard and Picasso for upwards of $200,000.

Bracelets & Billiards. Meanwhile, in Paris last week, more than 10,000 buyers a day were bustling through the Third Biennial of Antiques. Set off by the Grand Palais’ lavish decorations, including 500 trees and an artificial lake with swans, more than $10 million worth of objets d’art were on sale. Rarities included the child-sized billiard table given to King Louis XIV when he was twelve years old, and an art nouveau serpentine bracelet designed for Sarah Bernhardt.

“When things are going badly at the Bourse,” explains Paris Auctioneer Philippe Rheims, “business is booming at the Hotel Drouot,” France’s largest auction house. Buyers are holding on to what they have and are eager to buy more. Consequently, things that would have been passed up by connoisseurs a decade ago are now fetching some farfetched prices. Pre-Raphaelite drawings, early Americana and Louis XIII furniture have increased over last season’s record-smashing pace. Peregrine Pollen, president of Manhattan’s Parke-Bernet, is still stunned that a 16th century bronze brought $17,000, or $5,000 more than his most optimistic guess. For the first time Parke-Bernet’s schedule is booked for the next six months. But cautions Pollen: “Don’t expect to come and get bargains this year.”