Bonhams
London, U.K.; 76 other locations worldwide
Bonhams.com
Focus: Fine art, antiques
The origins of Bonhams lie with fine art print specialist Thomas Dodd, who in 1793 established a brisk business auctioning important print collections. In the mid-19th century, the house expanded to paintings, jewelry, and metalware and partnered with George Bonham, assuming his name. The company began to take its current shape in 2000, when former Christie’s director Robert Brooks acquired Bonhams and merged it with his classic motorcars auction firm, creating Bonhams & Brooks. A year later the company merged with Phillips’s U.K. business, and the name became Bonhams once again. Today, the house has a presence on five continents and holds about 500 sales annually in nearly 75 categories as diverse as Californian art, musical instruments, and British ceramics. Perhaps due to Brooks’s keen eye for automobiles, Bonhams sold a one-of-a-kind 1960 Aston Martin DB4GT Bertone “Jet” coupé for £3,249,500 ($4.9 million) in May.
Robert Brooks, chairman
What was the most successful auction of the past year?
Three stand out for me: the $33 million Goodwood Festival of Speed sale in June 2012; the world-record price for a blue diamond at $9.4 million at our Bond Street jewelry sale in April 2013; and the $16.6 million Chinese art sale in May 2013, which showed the market in robust form.
What was the most exciting or surprising lot?
The sale of the blue diamond was electric. With 25 phone lines in operation and fierce bidding in the room, it was a memorable event. The most surprising has to be the $1.5 million sale of Chinese Girl, by Vladimir Tretchikoff. The original of the world’s most reproduced painting, it set a world record for the artist.
How has the auction house changed since its founding?
Bonhams was founded in 1793, so it has a long and proud history. But the house in its modern form really dates from the turn of the millennium. When my colleagues and I took over Bonhams in 2000, it was very much U.K. based. We are now the third-largest international auction house in the world—and the only one of the “big three” with trust accounting. We have salesrooms in all the world’s major markets—on Madison and 57th Street in New York, on the West Coast of the U.S., in Australia and Hong Kong, as well as in London’s Mayfair and Knightsbridge.
What are your plans for the next five years?
The opening in October this year of our $50 million, brand-new, state-of-the-art salesroom on New Bond Street in London is not only a symbol of our growing success over the past 13 years, it is also a visible and powerful demonstration of our confidence in the future.
What artist or market should collectors watch?
Asia continues to be a very important area, and the growth of our Chinese and Japanese sales—in London, New York, and Hong Kong—has been significant. Perhaps the most interesting emerging art markets, however, are in Africa. Bonhams has for many years held highly successful sales of South African art, but we are now seeing growing interest in art from elsewhere on the continent. Our Modern and Contemporary African Art auction on May 22, 2013, for example, set 20 new world records for African artists.
What would you buy for your own collection if it came up at auction?
My own personal interest is in modern military history, so any one of the many WWI artifacts that will be sold next year—the centenary of this devastating war—would interest me.
