May 29 (Bloomberg) -- Rock memorabilia fans and antique collectors may compete for a gothic ceiling light that had once belonged to the pop singer Cher when it is offered for sale.

The hexagonal brass light, dating from 1860 and attributed to the architect Augustus Pugin, is estimated to fetch up to 15,000 pounds ($24,000) in London on July 15, said auction house Bonhams. The light hung in Cher’s oceanfront villa at Malibu, California, during the 1990s. She sold her antiques collection in 2006, said Bonhams.

Pugin created much of the decoration at the U.K.’s Houses of Parliament, whose members are now caught in a scandal over expense claims.

“The timing couldn’t be better,” Mark Oliver, Bonhams’s director of 20th-century decorative arts, said in an interview. “Gothic revival has lost popularity. Now because of the dreadful publicity members of parliament are getting, we’ll have a nice crowd coming along.”

A pair of original Pugin doors removed from the House of Lords after it was bombed in World War II is estimated at 600 pounds to 800 pounds.

Korean Lincoln

For the perfect apartment (with Cher’s chandelier and Pugin doors), why not add a talking point in the form of a 10-foot- wide aluminum sculpture showing Abraham Lincoln?

The 2009 work by South Korean artist Hyung Koo Kang could be yours for 136,000 pounds, and will be a star attraction in “Korean Eye: Moon Generation,” opening on June 20, the first international selling exhibition of Korean contemporary art. It is co-hosted by auctioneers Phillips de Pury and the Saatchi Gallery. The London show, sponsored by Standard Chartered, will include work by about 30 artists.

Kang’s “Lincoln in the Book” is in the form of an open leather-bound volume with the text of the Gettysburg Address and a photograph of Lincoln with a single blue eye.

“Kang’s the hottest Korean name at the moment,” said art collector David Ciclitira, who organized the show. “His gallery shows are selling out.”

Ciclitira is chairman of Parallel Media Group Plc, the sports-sponsorship company behind the Ballantine’s Championship, Korea’s largest golf tournament.

“I was surprised by how little Korean art has been seen in the West,” Ciclitira said in a telephone interview. “It’s different, diverse, interesting and it isn’t overpriced. It hasn’t had the hype Chinese art has had.”

From 2003 to 2008, worldwide auction sales of Chinese contemporary art increased more than 300-fold, according to the French-based database Artprice.

HyungKoo Lee’s anatomically correct skeletons of cartoon characters were exhibited last year at the Basel Natural History Museum during Art Basel. The 2007 work “Homo Animatus” will be included in the London show, priced at 70,000 pounds.

The 10-foot-wide calligraphic canvas “From Point” by philosopher-painter Lee Ufan, dating from 1977, is the most expensive work in the exhibition at 200,000 pounds.

Russian Cancellation

The exhibition of works by Russian artist Alexander Melamid that was scheduled to open at Phillips de Pury, London, and at the Saatchi Gallery on May 22 has been postponed.

The show was put on hold due to a dispute between Melamid and an owner of the artist’s hip-hop inspired works, examples of which were exhibited in Detroit in 2008, said the auction house. Phillips’s event, titled “OH, MY GOD,” has been rescheduled for spring 2010.

Market Life

Collectors have paid seven-figure sums for precious objects at a London gallery and an out-of-town auction house, showing renewed life in the U.K. art market, dealers said.

White Cube confirmed yesterday that it has sold a 40-foot- wide painting by the Anglo-Indian artist Raqib Shaw. The largest piece Shaw has created to date, the panel shows “Krishna-like figures engaged in sexual combat,” said White Cube.

It is one of five paintings titled “Absence of God” that went on show at the gallery’s Hoxton Square space on May 20.

A 5-foot-high fiberglass sculpture by Shaw entitled “Adam” has also found a buyer, said Honey Luard, a White Cube spokeswoman. Both works sold for undisclosed seven-figure prices to anonymous buyers, the gallery said last week.

Shaw shot to prominence in October 2007 when his 10-foot- wide work “Garden of Earthly Delights III” fetched a record 2.7 million pounds ($4.1 million) at Sotheby’s, London.

London-based Oriental art dealership Eskenazi said yesterday it was bidding on behalf of an unnamed “Western collector” when it paid a record 4.2 million pounds for a Qing Dynasty jade water buffalo at an auction in Wiltshire on May 20.

The 18th-century stone carving, offered with its original enamel base, had been expected to fetch up to 800,000 pounds at the Salisbury auctioneers Woolley & Wallis. The price was the highest paid at a U.K. provincial saleroom.

“The stand has an Imperial mark, suggesting it decorated one of the Emperor’s palaces,” Philip Constantinidi, an Eskenazi director, said in a telephone interview.

“There’s no recession at that end of the market,” John Axford, the Salisbury auction house’s Oriental-art specialist, said. “The buffalo is an Imperial treasure. People are prepared to invest heavily in rare things with that kind of provenance.”

(Scott Reyburn writes about the art market for Bloomberg News. Opinions expressed are his own.)

To contact the writer on the story: Scott Reyburn in London at sreyburn@hotmail.com.

Last Updated: May 28, 2009 19:00 EDT