Tis the season: the holiday season can be one of the most lucrative times of the year. Start planning now to boost sales by taking advantage of consum

When it comes to the holiday season, in both business and in life, there's really no better time of year. It's a time to reflect, give thanks and gather with family and friends. But it is also a time when success is as vital to the survival of retail establishments as paint was to Picasso's canvas.

The holiday season presents a special set of opportunities that enables artists and art gallery owners alike to stretch their minds and imaginations to bring customers into the shop during the season and beyond. Whether an art gallery specializes in six-figure sales of high-profile pieces or $60 sales of paper, posters and plates, creative marketing techniques can increase sales during the holiday season and bring customers back after the last ornament has been taken off the tree.

Don't just rely on the tried-and-true holiday art walk to increase your seasonal sales. Sylvia White, owner of Contemporary Artists' Services, a management-consulting firm in Los Angeles which specializes in career development for visual artists, encourages gallery owners to tap into artists' creativity to bring customers in. Ask a group of artists to make Christmas-tree ornaments, she suggested, or ask a them to make menorahs. Ask a group of artists to use their creativity in a way they never have before.

"What I like to do is think of the artist I am working with and ask them to make something that might be particularly relevant to their work," she said. "I once asked a bronze sculptor to do a fireplace screen, and it turned out great. It's something he would have never done himself, and he loved the idea of someone suggesting it."

Once the artist creates that holiday piece, White recommended the gallery owner display it next to some of the artist's traditional work. Ask a glass blower to make an ornament, for example, and display it next to one of his $2,000 vases or bowls. Ask a woodworker to carve a dreidel, she said, and sit it next to one of his most exquisite works. "If the artist is a painter, have them use their style and adapt it to a functional object for the season," she said.

Give the Gift of Creative Shows

White also recommends gallery owners create a show around a holiday theme. "There was a toy show once where artists were invited to make toys that really worked," White added. "It was fabulous." Or, recommended Susan Schear, owner of ArtIsIn LTC, an Oradell, N.J.-based marketing firm that helps artists develop and market their businesses, "you could do a whole lighting show with all different candlesticks made by different artists in several different media," she said. "Kwanzaa is really evolved," she added. "Why not do a show on the history behind Kwanzaa?"

Jack Appelman, c.e.o. of Applejack Art Partners in Manchester, Vt., a company that prints and licenses artists' works, said gallery owners need to do more than just package items together to create an unforgettable show. "Years ago, a gallery could have a Christmas print released for the Christmas season," he said. "They would do a show with an artist and have some kind of event, and it would bring people in. That doesn't do it any longer. Successful galleries are moving toward the model of a gift shop in a way, where they revolve a show around a print and include other products that carry that theme as well."

For example, a gallery might hang a print of an angel and couple it with a piece of glass work that is an angel or a box of hand-painted cards with angels featured on the front. "It also plants the seed for the customer to come back," he said. "And it allows that customer to make impulse buys."

Festive Promotions

You can be impulsive about your promotional ideas as well, White said. For example, why not stop in at the five-and-dime and buy regular items--colorful string, or a Plexiglas box--and ask your artists to create something holiday-themed in their own individual way? "When you give an artist a generic tool to work with and say, `Do something,' you can use the pieces as a hook to get people in there," White said.

If you're more comfortable with traditional marketing techniques, such as a direct-mail campaign, White strongly suggested you don't simply send out a black-and-white postcard. She advised investing in design and color to guarantee your customers will come in. "A lot of gallery owners and artists make the mistake of saving money by not printing a color image on an announcement or by not sending out something that is really gorgeous," she said. "What you send out can really make or break someone's mind in terms of coming to see the show."

Photo auctions attract aggressive bidding: sotheby's strikes gold while Christie's sales are off

It is becoming ever more important for the photo experts at the top auction houses to persuade important collectors to consign top-flight collections. Last year, in a major embarrassment for Sotheby's and Christie's, the upstart Phillips won the right to sell the Seagram's collection and subsequently walked off with the season's top honors. This season, Sotheby's struck gold with two major single-owner sales of its own.

Sotheby's strikes gold while Christie's sales are off.

On April 27, Sotheby's held a sale entitled "Important Photographs from a Private Collection." Of significance is the fact that it held the sale on that night in April, perhaps trying to emulate the powerful Impressionist and Modern paintings department. (Their top sales are ticket-only evening events comparable to glitzy Hollywood movie openings.) When the auction houses try to woo collectors away from each other, the promise of such an over-the-top production is a powerful lure.

Evidently, the ploy worked. It lured a standing-room only crowd that bid very aggressively--so aggressively, in fact, that nine out of every 10 pieces sold over-estimate.

Each and every one of the 43 pieces sold, and the auction brought in $3.9 million, 60 percent more than the estimate. The top lot at the sale was the disquieting Diane Arbus masterpiece, "Identical Twins (Cathleen and Colleen), Roselle, N.J."

"Disquieting" might be an understatement; according to Sotheby's, it served "as inspiration for the recurring motif of twin girls that appears throughout Stanley Kubrick's film, 'The Shining.'" Originally expected to bring $250,000 to $350,000, it ultimately sold to an anonymous private collector for $478,400, a new auction record for Arbus.

Another record was set when Walker Evans' "Negro Barbershop Interior, Atlanta," sold to the Howard Greenberg Gallery in New York for $198,400. This price is somewhat baffling, as this very work had sold just two years earlier at Sotheby's for only $95,600. This represents a 100 percent increase in two years--quite an enviable return on investment. The last of the three records set that night was for Robert Frank, when an image of his 1956 photograph "Chicago" realized $131,200; more than four times its high estimate of $30,000.

The second single-owner sale held at Sotheby's this season carried the following unwieldy title, "The Gordon L. Bennett Collection of Carleton Watkins 'New Series' Photographs of Yosemite." The set is remarkable in that it comprises 40 125-year-old mammoth photographs in "superb condition."

In fact, finding any Watkins pieces at all is difficult, according to the head of Sotheby's photographs department, Denise Bethel. "He lost his life's work twice," says Bethel. Once, when he was forced to turn over his entire stock of negatives to I. W. Taber, a rival photographic publisher, and then when the fires following the San Francisco earthquake destroyed his 'New Series' views."

The 40 photographs were purchased by Gordon Bennett in a rare book store in San Francisco in 1967. He found them hidden on the store's bottom shelves. One might hope that the shop's owner, who had priced them at $25 each, or less, is not around to read that the set brought $2 million, far exceeding its high estimate of $1,406,000. The top lot was "Aggasiz Rock and the Yosemite Falls, From Union Point," which sold to the Fraenkel Gallery in San Francisco for a record price of $310,400.

As for the main mixed-owners auction, the results were somewhat less extraordinary.

The sale totaled $2,795,200, (below the high estimate of $2.9 million), and approximately 20 percent of the 179 works on offer went unsold. Frankly, this may be a more accurate gauge of the general state of the photo market. It seems that when exceptional collections appear, so do exceptional buyers, which explains the phenomenal success of the two Sotheby sales. For those in the real world trying to sell typical items, the reception is not quite as enthusiastic.

Four works in the sale broke the $100,000 mark, and, interestingly, three of them were taken by the lovers Tina Modotti and Edward Weston. The one Modotti, "Bandolier, Corn, and Guitar," which sold for $120,000, is a politically charged piece intended to evoke thoughts of the Mexican revolution. The other two $100,000-plus pieces, still lifes by Weston, are far less radical: "Pepper (3P)" (which also brought $120,000) and "Shells" (which brought the highest price at the sale, $232,000).

FROM PLACING BUSINESS TO MAKING SALES

Over the past three years JMB Insurance has transformed itself from primarily a real estate-focused agency to a broad-based client-centered multiline agency that is targeting growth in excess of 15% a year. President and CEO Steve Topel and his four-person executive management team have instituted major technological, marketing, environmental and cultural changes, all focused on strong and efficient client service.

When JMB Insurance was formed in Chicago in 1971 through an acquisition of a small agency, its goal was to provide risk management services for the assets owned by JMB Realty Corporation. JMB Realty was one of the largest commercial real estate owners in the country. Finding business for the agency was not a concern. There were many opportunities as JMB Realty expanded its holdings. Agency employees were experts in designing sophisticated insurance programs that often involved several insurers and reinsurers, coupled with risk management services that served to mitigate or eliminate the risks facing their parent.

However, as anyone in the insurance business or any business knows, the only constant in life is change. And change came to JMB Insurance in 1986 as the result of a change in the commercial real estate marketplace. JMB Realty spun off the insurance agency and also began disposing of some of its properties. By 1990, the agency still had 75% of its revenue coming from the placement of insurance programs for assets owned by JMB Realty.

Lee Sacks, the agency's founder, headed up the effort to recruit sales-oriented professionals who could bring in new business and build on the substantial expertise that JMB had in placing and servicing commercial real estate insurance risks. At the same time, he wanted to diversify into other classes and lines of business, including employee benefits and individual life insurance. Then in 2003, there was another turning point for the agency when Lee retired. His efforts, along with his team, had borne substantial fruit, with 95% of the $20 million in revenue now coming from outside JMB Realty assets.

"Ownership decided to grow the business. They offered me the opportunity to help the agency move to the next level. I had been with another insurance brokerage as a P&C producer for 20 years. It was an attractive offer," Steve remembers. "I was being offered the chance to run a business that had an excellent reputation and was financially sound.

"On the plus side, there was a commitment from ownership to grow the business. There was also a terrific group of people who wanted to move to the next level." However some of the necessary building blocks were missing. The agency was still using a Delphi agency management system. And there was a shortage of middle management structure. "We needed to add more people, and invest in marketing materials, technology, and more space," Steve explains.

"This was a very successful business with an outstanding group of people. It was a perfect situation and I was honored to be offered the opportunity to help make the changes necessary for making the agency even more successful. I'm also fortunate to have a smart, talented senior management team. We're all focused on some pretty impressive goals."

No standing still

"One of the things you learn very quickly in this business is that you can't stand still," Steve continues. "If you try to stay even, you always lose ground. You need to constantly move forward. We needed to take the steps necessary to perpetuate the agency.

"I kept sticking 20 pounds of stuff into a 10-pound bag. There was change after change after change," Steve remembers. "Fortunately, we have a resilient team and they welcomed every challenge. The result is a stronger agency with a workforce that has really taken an active part in the transformation.

"It also helped me identify the key players at the agency. I was able to put together a team of excellent, highly motivated individuals to serve on the executive and management committees that we set up soon after I joined JMB," he explains. "This team is responsible for managing the changes and keeping new changes coming. You'd think that the constant bombardment might have had a deleterious effect on our personnel, but the opposite has been true. Every time they successfully respond to a change, we see the agency get better.

L.A.'s 100 largest private companies: ranked by 2005 revenues

Eighteen privately-held companies headquartered in Los Angeles County surpassed $1 billion in annual revenues for the 2005 fiscal year, led by Platinum Equity LLC.

MDFC Holding Co., David Murdock's holding company for Dole Food Co. and Castle & Cooke Inc., held onto the second spot. Trader Joe's Co. Inc. jumped six spots to the No. 3 position with $5 billion in revenues after the Business Journal revisited its estimate of the South Pasadena company's revenues.

High gas prices contributed to growth at two local independent petroleum companies. No. 13 World Oil, of South Gate, reported $1.2 billion in revenues, up $160 million or 13 percent from the previous year. Revenues at No. 17 United Oil of Gardena increased to just over $1 billion, up $177 million or 20 percent over the previous year.

Many companies on this year's list are not only the largest but also some of the fastest growing businesses headquartered locally. Three companies saw 2005 revenues increase by at least 50 percent over the previous year.

Superior Communications saw the largest year-over-year growth with revenues of $245 million, up $112 million or 85 percent. The manufacturer and distributor of wireless phone accessories moved up to No. 56 on ibis year's list, up 26 spots from the year prior. No. 12 Newegg.com moved up seven spots with 2005 revenues of $1.3 billion, up $320 million.

Apparel and accessories retailer Forever 21 Inc. jumped 11 spots to No. 19 after revenues increased to $924 million, up $281 million compared with the year earlier.

Numerous companies on last year's list no longer qualify due to mergers, acquisitions and relocations. Cook Inlet Energy Supply LLC, No. 4 last year with $3.4 billion in 2004 revenues, was acquired by Sydney-based Macquarie Bank Group. The purchase of the natural gas trader and marketer was announced last November. Paramount Pictures, a unit of Viacom Inc. acquired DreamWorks LLC, No. 18 last year. The motion picture studio founded in 1994 by David Geffen, Jeffrey Katzenberg and Steven Spielberg had previously spun off its successful animation unit DreamWorks Animation SKG before being acquired.

Also closing shop this year was No. 77 Fishking Processors. The Los Angeles-based frozen seafood retailer closed its downtown manufacturing plant after nearly 60 years in operation when owner Nippon Suisan purchased a Georgia-based competitor and merged the operations.

Three companies on last year's list moved headquarters to outside of the county. California Dairies Inc., No. 8 last year with $2.5 billion in 2004 revenues, changed its base to Visalia. STA Travel Inc., No. 56 last year, moved from Los Angeles to Lewisville, Texas. The student travel agency reported $223 million in 2004 revenues.

Call center operator eTelecare Global Solutions, No. 87 last year with $124 million, moved its headquarters to Tucson, Ariz. from Monrovia, although the company still retains a large operation locally.

Overall, the 100 largest privately held companies in L.A. County reported combined revenue of $77.3 billion, up $2.1 billion or 3 percent over the previous year. Listed companies employ more than 220,000 people in more than 1,000 worldwide offices.

THE PACESETTER

PLATINUM EQUITY LLC

Beverly Hills-based Platinum Equity LLC tops the list of the largest privately held companies headquartered in Los Angeles County for the second consecutive year. Platinum Equity's portfolio companies totaled $8 billion in 2005 revenue, holding steady from the previous year.

Founded in 1995 by Tom Gores, the firm buys and runs companies operating in sectors that include information technology, software, telecommunications, logistics, manufacturing, health care products and entertainment distribution.

The firm has made three major acquisitions since the beginning of the year. It acquired $1.5 billion PNA Group Inc., a steel processor, in May from TUI AG. A few weeks later it acquired Houston-based Metal Supplies Co. and integrated it into PNA. In July, it acquired Hispanic telecommunications service Americatel Corp. from Entek And its most recent acquisition was made in September when it acquired Textron Fastening Systems, a global provider of fastening technologies, from Textron Inc.

In May, the company reached an agreement to sell portfolio company NextiraOne Europe to ABN Amro Capital France, the French private equity business of ABN Amro Capital. The company was acquired four years ago from Alcatel and was Platinum Equity's first major venture into Europe.

"We broadened the focus of NextiraOne and shifted the business from a predominantly voice solutions provider to a fully enabled provider of integrated (internet protocol) communications and managed services in Europe," Brian Wall, Platinum Equity's managing director for Europe, said in a statement.

Desert's luxury home market shows pent-up demand in 2007 sales

The Coachella Valley's luxury home market priced at $1.5 million and higher is poised for a strong showing in 2007, primarily because buyers who sat on the sidelines since 2005 wary to buy are making lifestyle choices to purchase then-Baby Boomer dream house.

That's why long time luxury home Realtors like Joan Rothermund, of Rothermund and Rudman of Prudential California Realty and a member of the Desert Estates Network, are already seeing closed escrows on trophy properties in 2007. "We just sold a home at $3.1 million at Bella Clancy (the new Tuscany-inspired enclave at Rancho Mirage) and we have homes at $3.6 million and $3.19 million in escrow," Rothermund said.

"What we are seeing is people who are making lifestyle choices about buying the second home in the desert they have been putting off," she said. "Buyers, who sat on the sidelines in 2005 and 2006, concerned that the market may bottom out, are now instead going out to buy for lifestyle reasons. There is so much pent up demand."

According to the Multiple Listing Service operated by the California Desert Association of Realtors, there were 319 homes over $1.5 million that sold in 2006, up over 285 in 2005. The median price of a luxury home sold in 2006 was $2 million, up from $1.9 million in 2005.

"The luxury home market is doing well in the Coachella Valley because there is no recession, the stock market is doing well and personal income has not declined," said Greg Berkemer, executive vice president of the California Desert Association of Realtors. "We don't have any of the negative factors we had a few years ago when the housing market had bottomed out." Berkemer noted that the sale of luxury homes in the Valley has pushed up the median price of a home. "That's just a mathematical anomaly of our market," he said. "But that's not to say that the guy who has a median priced home is getting the price lie might want because prices are backing off somewhat."

A key advantage for the desert luxury home market is that the Coachella Valley's selling season is winter and early spring when the weather is postcard perfect, compared to the snow and cold of most parts of the nation. "As our season kicks in now, I hope more people will see clearly that can buy a home here in stead of leasing," Berkemer added.

Developer Mario Gonzales, a well-respected builder/owner of GHA Companies is also optimistic about the market price threshold of $1.5 million and greater to be a much more active market in 2007 than homes listed for half that price or less.

"We have seen an increase in the quality of buyers since the beginning of the latter part of the fourth quarter of 2006. The multimillion dollar and trophy home buyer market continues to be in demand in spite of the hysteria of a housing bubble," Gonzales said. "This type of buyer is not affected by interest rates but is most interested in a lifestyle and understands the value of real estate, location and most importantly, quality."

Gonzales' company has reported over six sold units in at its most recent Rancho Mirage community, Escala, with an average price of $1.6 million.

Other Realtors, members of the Desert Estate Network, which specializes in million dollar plus properties like Janine Stevens of Dyson & Dyson Real Estate Associates, Louise Hampton of Prudential California Realty and Sandi Phillips, of California Lifestyle Realty Team, say 2007 could be the "lucky" year for selling trophy estate properties. "The market is now a buyer's market so I am finding homes on the market longer and I am advising my sellers to make sure thenhomes are pristine and looking their best I or most exposure to prospective buyers to compete in this market," Philips said.

"We are seeing the Baby Boomers (buyers), wanting a second home to enjoy the sunshine and golf and for what will ultimately be their retirement home. We're starting to see more buyers from the harsh weather states like Oregon and Washington."

Hampton pointed out that the days of investor-buyers rushing in to buy a luxury home and flip it in a sale a few months later to make thousands of dollars in profit "are over."

"I'm seeing buyers all over the board, especially in Palm Springs," she said, "including retired couples, Baby Boomers looking for a second home; gay couples."

Jose Enrique Souto: vice president of sales and marketing, Rowland coffee roasters

Imagine a world without coffee. Worse yet, imagine a world with only decaf. As long as the Souto family has something to say about it, neither cataclysmic event will take place in the United States.

Since its founding in Cuba in 1865, Rowland Coffee Roasters has been a family-run operation. "Coffee, for Cubans, is a very, very strong part of your daily life," says Jose Enrique Souto, vice president of sales and marketing. The Miami-based company owns 80 percent of the market share for espresso beans as well as some of the most popular Latino coffee brands in the United States: Bustelo, Pilon, Medaglia D'Oro, Caffe' Signore, E1 Pico, Estrella, Ideal, Oquendo and the family's very own label, Souto.

Patriarch and owner, Jose A. "Pepe" Souto, 90, still comes into the company's south Florida office a few days a week, but Rowland is essentially overseen by his three sons: Jose Enrique, Jose Alberto and Angel. Enrique, the eldest, vividly recalls the humble beginnings of this coffee powerhouse.

"I was about 15 or 16 when I started helping my father over the weekend and after school, delivering coffee. It was small-a real family business." While Pepe was roasting coffee, Enrique and his mother were selling the beans door-to-door. "This was like 'Avon calling','" Enrique says. "It was the type of situation where families who were coming to Miami [from Cuba] knew each other. They knew us as coffee people, so they bought the coffee from us. It helped support my family."

The company's income enabled Enrique to graduate from business school at the University of Miami. After a short stint in the retail clothing business, he came back to the bean. His two younger brothers completed their studies shortly thereafter and the trio took the reigns at Rowland Coffee.

Cage Pilon had been owned by Tetley and, according to Souto, was probably the largest Hispanic coffee owner in the U.S. about 15 years ago. "Pilon was familiar. For Cubans, it was Cuban coffee. For Americans, it was espresso coffee." In the 1990s, Tetley approached Rowland to buy their coffee division. "We jumped at it. It was a very highly-leveraged buy, and the small guy bought the big guy!" The sale was finalized in February 2000. Rowland maintained its commitment to Hispanic coffee and its main buyers. Wee fe It that Cuba would open up and we wanted to be ready to do business in the old country."

Although Enrique and his family have been in Florida since the 1960s-and their island home hasn't "opened up"-their love of Cuba has never dwindled. "We have a strong Cuban heritage that we have passed along to our sons and daughters. We are proud to say that we are Americans, but we still have celebrations like we did back in Cuba, like el "dia de los tres magos" and "nochebuena"; things

we grew up with." Meanwhile, Rowland Coffee is trying to inculcate the new Latino generation with some new traditions, including a love for the company's Cubano-Euro cafes. In January, Rowland's first store, Bustelo Cafe, opened at Florida International University. "It's a blend of old Cuba with a European look," says Enrique. The cage serves hot and iced coffees, Cuban sandwiches and Euro-style treats. "It was received with open arms by the students at FIU." Rowland plans to open a dozen more Bustelo Cages at various Florida universities.

The company is also looking into expanding its sales of espresso pods (preground, pre-measured, and pre-tamped: coffee wrapped in filter paper). Souto admits "they haven't been as popular, but we have been selling pods and we felt that the business was developing." Just this month, Rowland's pods hit a few stores in south Florida.

But in spite of all of their success, does Rowland Coffee fear Starbucks, the giant of all U.S. coffees? "Back in 1985, I met one of the original owners," Souto recalls. "He came to our factory to see the Italian operation." The companies weren't, and still aren't, competitors. "What they have done for the coffee industry is marvelous," he says. "They created a new following of people. They took the coffee business that was in decline in the U.S. and revived it. On the other hand, on our side of the business, we had a niche. Our business was growing." Starbucks' success has only helped Rowland Coffee.

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

Asian art sales in New York in September, and a number of extraordinary prices. At its Chinese art sale on 21 September, for instance, a Qianlong-period zitan-wood three railing, or sage's, bed (luohanchuang) became the most expensive Chinese bed ever sold at auction when it went to the Asian trade for $847,500 (476,123 [pounds sterling]). Its particular interest lay in its combination of traditional Chinese form and a quasi Western style rococo ornamentation; both the 'hundred antiques' motif and the scrolling acanthus leaf carving were of exceptional quality. The style is associated with the Yuanmingyuan Palace, remodelled in the Italian baroque style by the Emperor Qianlong in 1747 with the aid of Jesuit priests. It would seem that the market chose to believe that this piece came from the palace itself.

A mighty $1.07m-601,966 [pounds sterling]-changed hands for the sale's top lot, a large Late Shang or Early Western Zhou Dynasty ritual wine vessel and cover or you dating from the eleventh to tenth century Be. Along with a rarer Shang bronze owl-form covered vessel or xiaoyou from the collection of the late Doris Duke (it had been acquired by her father in 1937 for a massive $10,000), it was sold, for $511,500 (287,359 [pounds sterling]), to London dealer Roger Keverne buying on behalf of the new Compton Verney art gallery in Warwickshire, which now boasts the most important collection of archaic Chinese bronzes 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 covers and bearing the six-character mark of the Yongzheng emperor. Estimated at $70,000 $90,000, London dealers Eskenazi paid $466,700 for them (262,191 [pounds sterling]). The same firm paid $820,000 (456,367 [pounds sterling]) at Sotheby's on 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 with expectations of $50,000-$70,000. Such pieces are exceedingly rare, not least in mint condition. It was always going to soar way beyond its estimate, but what its price reveals is the sophistication of the current 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 huge prices.

What we saw more generally in the Chinese sales was a continuation of past trends, that anything of real quality and merit at any level would rocket while the mediocre or even the reasonable fell by the wayside. (Keverne, for instance, bid $40,000 for a lacquer box estimated at $2,000$3,000 and still did not secure it.) The sales also emphasised the importance of provenance in the West for archaeological material, and the additional premium paid for a glamorous, Duke style pedigree on anything. Yet the series's successes disguise pages of unwanted, bought-in lots.

This best-and-the-rest scenario was neatly illustrated at Sotheby's first thematic sale devoted to The Arts of Buddha, on 22 September. A private Chinese collector paid $1.9m (just over 1m [pounds sterling])--four times the published estimate--for five sheets of calligraphic script of the 'Perfection of Wisdom' Sutra by Zhao Mengfu (1254-1322), signed and dedicated by the artist, mounted in album form, bound in silk, and bearing two of the artist's deals, sixty collectors' seals and one colophon. Another Chinese collector also paid over the odds for an outstanding and large patinated gilt-bronze figure of Avalokitesvara of the Sui or early Tang Dynasty (Fig. 1)--$596,000 (331,701 [pounds sterling])--yet the entire $5m sale was only 59 per cent sold by lot and 47 per cent sold by value. Sotheby's $3.9m general Chinese sale was 60 per cent sold by let; Christie's $11m sale, 63 per cent.

Christie's $4m Japanese and Korean Art sale on 22 September fared slightly better in terms of percentages. Its top lot here was a spectacular and hotly contested pair of early seventeenth-century six-panel screens representing a Portuguese ship coming in to Japan to trade (Fig. 4). This telling historical document speaks volumes of the shock of the Japanese's early encounters with the curious 'southern barbarians' and their dark-skinned Indian crew. The screens were finally knocked down to an American collector for $589,900 (329,553 [pounds sterling]). An exceptional single-owner group of Nob masks and robes totalled $400,000. The great casualty here was the pair of massive