One of the world’s oldest auction houses hailed an ‘extraordinary’ year as sales headed for £600million.
Bonhams, 228 years old, cashed in amid booming demand for supercars, books, paintings and sculptures.
The number of people registering for auctions was 2.5 times higher than in 2020.
Masterpiece: Among the highlights of the year at Bonhams was the sale of Pablo Picasso’s 1937 portrait, Femme au Beret Mauve, which fetched £8m in New York in May
Among the highlights was the sale of Pablo Picasso’s 1937 portrait of his muse Marie-Therese, Femme au Beret Mauve, which fetched £8million in May.
The gun that killed Billy the Kid in August sold for £4.6million and a Chinese melon-shaped teapot for £2.1million.
And as crypto took off, Bonhams offered its first NFT – or non-fungible token.
In June it sold an abstract digital picture for £341,000, just months after artist Beeple sold a digital-only piece at rival Christie’s for £50million.
Bonhams’s Lucinda Bredin said: ‘What a year. We expanded around the world. And let’s not forget NFTs: we sold Cristiano Ronaldo’s trading card and an NFT of Natalia Osipova’s legendary dance from Giselle.
‘This year will go down in history as the beginning of a new art form.’
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