British Museum in London will in October open two new galleries with material from the Middle East, tracing the rich history and culture of the region. One will feature ceramics, glass and metalwork. The other will display some of the 3,000 examples of textiles held by the museum. Fahmida Suleman, the Museum’s Curator for the…
The fifth edition of arab luxury world, the Middle East’s leading conference on the business of luxury, has drawn to a successful close. This year, regional and global experts from the world of luxury converged at the JW Marriott Marquis Dubai, to discuss ‘The New Consumer, Consumption, and Change.’ The two-day conference – organised by…
By Tim Kennedy Several millennia ago, the common house cat (Felis silvestriscatus) was revered in ancient Egypt and conferred the name “Mau”, a godlike honorific. Mau were welcome in households because of their ability to kill rats, mice and even snakes such as cobras. Egypt’s Pharaonic royal families also admired cats because of their dignity,…
David Bennett, worldwide chairman of Sotheby’s International Jewellery Division, who is often dubbed the “100-carat man” because of his unparalleled record of having auctioned seven 100-carat diamonds, introduced the elite audience (in Dubai) to the art of jewelry collecting with an emphasis on assessing gemstones; identifying jewels from a wide range of periods of jewelry…
Surveys indicate that more than 30% of the 300 largest global brands are now using or evaluating 3-D printing for prototyping, innovation projects or for actually producing what they sell. Over 200 universities and colleges already offer 3-D coursework in their curricula. To my mind, there is no question that 3-D has reached a tipping…
Working in iron wire the diameter of a clothes hanger, Southwest France-based sculptor Marie Christophe — whose clients include Hermès, Dior, Roger Vivier and the interior designer Jean-Louis Deniot — fashions animals, light fixtures, fanciful birdcages and other seemingly gossamer objets. Some pieces are beaded, like an elephant with crystal-strewn butterfly wings for ears that…
Vincent van Gogh’s great grandnephew, tells TRENDS how carrying the famous artist’s name has, despite his best efforts, influenced his direction in life. “Intuitively, from an early age on, I thought I’m not going to be a van Gogh expert and I have to find my own way in life. So after high school, I was…
This week, a heavenly whale touches down at the edge of the Jardin d’Acclimatation in Paris’s Bois de Boulogne. After more than a decade in the making, the Fondation Louis Vuitton, Bernard Arnault’s private art museum par excellence designed by the starchitect Frank Gehry, opens its doors to the public on October 27. Festivities began…
Bidding in the latest Dubai Important Watch auction at Christie’s was fast and furious with collectors from around the region gathering to compete for the 123 lots which sold collectively for $3,097,313 (AED11,376,430) , above the high estimate of $2.9 million. One of only ten known examples of Patek Philippe’s iconic reference 5971, the bezel…
Passion investments in the past eight years have outperformed equities market. The return on investment, RoI, was close to 77 per cent (local currency terms) since 2005, according to the first edition of The Coutts Index: Objects of Desire, which aims to provide the global benchmark for monitoring the performance of passion assets. The Index,…
