SOTHEBY’S have posted $4.9bn in worldwide sales for 2011, marginally up on 2010.

The United States remains the company's primary market, accounting for just over $1.9bn of sales, with the UK second at $1.5bn. Continental Europe yielded $527m, while Asia – largely Hong Kong-based sales – totalled $959m.

The company's biggest grossing sale of the year was the $315.8m Contemporary art evening sale in New York on November 9, followed by the $199.8m Impressionist and Modern art evening sale that took place, also in New York, a week earlier. Together they account for 10.5% of the entire year's sales total.

Dedicated Contemporary art sales, as a whole, brought in around $860m-870m, while those focusing on Impressionist and Modern art totalled around $1.48bn. Neither of these figures, nor those for other specific disciplines, take into account additional material that may have formed part of mixed sales or single-owner collections.

Of the other leading disciplines, jewellery made around $380m, Old Masters – paintings, prints, drawings and sculpture – around $150m, Asian art around $165m and antiquities close to $50m.

The importance of Chinese paintings and works of art was clearly underlined by a total of more than $650m.

Further details of the company's results have yet to be released, but the overall picture shows an encouraging performance in the context of the severe global downturn, reflecting the strength of the Far Eastern economies and the attractiveness of fine art, jewellery and works of art as alternative assets against the backdrop of weak stock and bond markets.