Submitted by Nick Gilbert on Tue, 02/16/2010 - 09:25
Georgiana Aitken, Head of Sale, Antiquities at Christie’s South Kensington, was kind enough to answer my questions about auctioneering.
HK: Is it possible for an ordinary person to acquire items from antiquity? If you had, say, a few thousand pounds to spend?
GA: Yes absolutely, antiquities are much more affordable and accessible than people would think. Estimates in our sales start at £500.
HK: How healthy is the antiquity market at the moment from the point of view of the vendor and auctioneer? Has it been hit by the global economic downturn?
Christie's 'Ancient Art and Antiquities' department offers ancient art from the dawn of civilization to the Dark Ages, ranging from Western Europe to the Caspian Sea, embracing the cultures of Egypt, Greece, Rome and the Near East.
Sales are held four times a year, twice in New York and twice in London.
Christie's 'Ancient Art and Antiquities' department offers ancient art from the dawn of civilization to the Dark Ages, ranging from Western Europe to the Caspian Sea, embracing the cultures of Egypt, Greece, Rome and the Near East.
Christie's London holds the world auction record of £7,926,650 for the Jenkins Venus from Newby Hall, England. This Roman marble statue was sold in 2002 for the highest price ever achieved for an ancient classical marble sculpture at auction. Other famous artefacts sold are The Schuster "Stargazer", an Anatolian marble female idol from the Chalcolithic Period, which fetched $1,808,000, and the Celtic gold warrior Fibula from the 3rd Century BC which was bought by the British Museum for £1,103,750 in April 2001.
Sales are held four times a year, twice in New York and twice in London.
French archaeologist Dr Alain Zivie shows some of the findings from the Tomb of the vizier Aper-el, which dates from the latter part of the 18th Dynasty, around 1353-1335 BC and are now stored at the Imhotep Museum at Saqqara. Dr Zivie explains that the difficulty in accessing the tomb meant that it was never raided in modern times, and only in ancient times when the thieves were not seeking antiquities.
Dr Zivie also explains what archaeology means to him, and stresses that he's "looking for history, for facts, for better understanding of this civilization, of this culture and this period".
Founded in 1941, the Santa Barbara Museum of Art has grown to become one of the top ten regional museums in the United States. It's collections span over 4,000 years and include works from Greco-Roman antiquity, Asia (China, Japan, India and Tibet), 19th and early 20th century England and France and 19th and early 20th century America. It also has galleries featuring International Modernism, Works on Paper, Photography, and Contemporary Art. In addition, it is home to the Alice Schott Doll Collection, which includes dolls from the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
Many of the pieces in it's collection of Greco-Roman figural works, as well as Luristan bronzes and architectural fragments, were donated by Wright S. Ludington. Of particular note is a monumental Hermes, formerly in the Lansdowne Collection.
While Turkey has managed to reclaim some major historical artifacts smuggled from Turkey to the US and the UK, it is still unable to implement effective measures against the smuggling of new ones. According to the "Cultural and Natural Assets Smuggling Report" prepared by the Culture and Tourism Ministry based on figures provided by the KOM - the Anti-smuggling and Organized Crime Bureau of the police department - Turkey sees higher statistics related to the smuggling of historical artefacts every year; in 2008, when authorities seized 42,073 historical artefacts and detained 4,077 suspects in 1,576 operations. In 2003 security authorities seized 3,255 historical artefacts that smugglers were attempting to take abroad. With a steady rise over years, this figure rose to 17,936 in 2007. As only the amount of seized items can be measured, there is no reliable, if any, information about the number of historical and cultural artefacts illegally taken outside the country.
Georgiana Aitken, Head of Sale, Antiquities at 
