Phillips de Pury & Company
Phillips de Pury & Company is an auction house and art dealership, with offices in London, New York, Geneva, Berlin, Brussels, Los Angeles, Milan, Munich and Paris. Phillips conducts auctions in New York, London and Geneva in the areas of Contemporary Art, Photography, 20-21st Century Design, Art and Jewellery. Phillips also handles private treaty sales and art advisory services including building private collections.
[edit] History
The company originated as the London auction house of Phillips, founded in London by Harry Phillips, a young entrepreneur. In 1796, he opened his own auction house after resigning as the senior clerk to James Christie. During his first year of business, Phillips conducted 12 auctions. Success came quickly. Soon, the business was conducting sales for all the famous and distinguished people of the day including Beau Brummel and Napoleon. Very little is known about the origins of Harry Phillips and why he was so well-connected to the aristocracy; in 1789 whilst working for Christie he married a Sarah Mitchell at St Martin in the Fields and they had at least three children, of whom the youngest, William Augustus, was destined to take control of the company on his father's death.
James Christie must have regretted bitterly having refused the young Phillips a raise as he went on to snatch many prestigious sales from his ex-employer. To win clients Phillips combined business acumen with a flair for showmanship, introducing new ways to promote his sales such as elaborate evening receptions before important auctions - an essential part of the auction business today. Phillips quickly gained the confidence of the British aristocracy.
When he died in 1840, Harry Phillips passed on a strong and successful business to his son, William Augustus. In 1879, William changed the firm's name to "Messrs Phillips & Son." In 1882 this in turn became "Phillips, Son & Neale" when he brought his son-in-law, Frederick, into the business, and that name continued until the 1970s when the firm returned to "Phillips" under the ownership of Christopher Weston and Christopher Hawkings. During the next three decades the company earned a reputation as the training ground for aspiring specialists and antiques dealers, many employees seeing it as a stepping stone to either Christie's or Sotheby's, where turnover and salaries were much higher. Weston and Hawkings expanded the operation country-wide and business increased several-fold but Phillips turnover still only amounted to around one tenth of either Sotheby's or Christie's. This was largely because it was commonly known within the fine art market that few good specialists remained with Phillips long because of the higher rewards and prestige to be had elsewhere so clients with 7-figure items invariably sold at Christie's or Sotheby's. Their main achievement was in popularising the antiques auction scene generally, being much more approachable and accessible than the (for many people) daunting Sotheby's and Christie's. In 1999, Christopher Weston sold his majority stake in the company to venture capitalists 3i who spruced the operation up and resold it shortly after for a considerable profit.
From 1999 to 2003, Phillips was owned by LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton. After a series of disastrous sales and extremely heavy losses Bonhams bought the UK operations of Phillips in 2001 and rebranded them under the Bonhams name. Most of the rump of the business was closed with smaller departments acquired by the international art dealers Simon de Pury and Daniella Luxembourg, and continued under the name Phillips de Pury & Company. In March 2004, the Chairman, Simon de Pury, acquired majority control of the firm.
In 1999, Phillips Auctioneers was bought by the French luxury goods brand LVMH and Simon de Pury & Daniela Luxembourg, private dealers of Impressionist, Modern and Post-War art, were appointed to run the company which was renamed Phillips, de Pury & Luxembourg. In 2004, Simon de Pury took majority share of the business and focussed the specialist fields to works of the modern and contemporary eras. The new company, Phillips de Pury & Company, has continued to grow and successful introduce the best of new art talent to the secondary market as well as hosting a significant range of selling shows for contemporary artists and designers. The company opened its European headquarters in Howick Place London in early 2008.
On 6 October 2008, the company was purchased by the Russia-based Mercury Group. In order to acquire a majority share in the company, Mercury paid approximately $60 million, though the actual transaction was private. "Around 50 percent" of the money was used to cover Phillips’s debt. Mercury is run by Leonid Friedland and his associate, Leonid Strunin.[1]
[edit] References
- ^ Judd Tully (December 2008), Mercury Rising, ART+AUCTION, http://www.artinfo.com/news/story/29406/mercury-rising/, retrieved 2008-12-10
