London – Phillips de Pury & Company is pleased to announce the ceramics highlights from its London Design auction. The sale will offer the most important group of Modernist ceramics ever to appear at auction. Approximately forty works have been selected from the renowned Berkeley Collection. Formed during a period of nearly thirty years of close friendship between the collectors Harley Carpenter and Geof Walker and the Viennese born potter Lucie Rie. This auction is a unique opportunity to acquire some major works with an extraordinary exhibition history and well documented provenance by these most revered of ceramic artists. The ceramic works and wall will be displayed in the Phillips de Pury gallery in an innovative setting designed to enhance the viewers’ experience of the exhibition.’

Lucie Rie gave Harley Carpenter and Geof Walker access to some of her best pieces and encouraged them to also collect those of her friend and collaborator Hans Coper. The collection grew steadily and soon became the first port of call for Museum curators looking for willing lenders. Many of the works on offer are recently returned from a groundbreaking tour of Japan, the first retrospective of Hans Coper’s work in that country. Some pieces have also been shown at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, Issey Miyake’s Design Foundation in Tokyo, The Barbican in London, The Museum Angewandte Kunst in Vienna and The Gardiner Museum in Toronto amongst others.

Catalogue now available online for Leslie Hindman’s October 4th & 5th Asain Works of Art Auction.

Sotheby’s October 5th Photographs auction in New York features a varied range of material from the 19th to 21st centuries.  Two landmark documents in the history of photographic literature will be offered—an early copy of Gardner’s Sketchbook of the War, and a complete set of Alfred Stieglitz’s photographic quarterly, Camera Work.  Modernist innovator Pierre Dubreuil’s mastery of the medium is evident in two of his best-known images: Spectacles and The First Round.  A dramatic, twice-signed mural of Ansel Adams’s famed Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico, and a mural of Leaves, Mt. Rainier National Park are featured, along with other Adams photographs.  A rare lifetime print of Diane Arbus’s Viva, the Warhol superstar, was originally illustrated in an early issue of New York, nearly causing the magazine’s demise.  A massive print of Peter Beard’s Maureen Gallagher and Late-Night Feeder presents a dazzling array of color drawing and collage elements.

Following the successful May 2011 sales of volumes I and II, the third volume of works from the Collection of Allan Stone comes to Sotheby’s New York this autumn. Trained as a lawyer, but passionate about art, Mr. Stone opened his own gallery in 1960. He joined the ranks of influential New York dealers such as Leo Castelli and Sidney Janis, while blazing his own path with a unique selection of artists.

London – British Designer, Faye Toogood, will launch her third furniture collection, Delicate Interference: Assemblage 3, exclusively with Phillips de Pury & Company during the 2011 London Design Festival.

The series examines iridescence as a natural optical force through new and re-contextualised works in bronze, aluminum, steel, glass and resin. By a touch of alchemy she uses man-made materials to create a natural phenomenon, mimicking nature’s ability to attract and protect through the refraction of light.

The entire series will be on show at Phillips de Pury’s, Brook Street space with Studio Toogood directing the exhibition design. All works in the collection will be available exclusively through Phillips de Pury.

Sotheby’s will be hosting a private selling exhibition of works by Sam Francis from 17 September – 14 October 2011. This will be our inaugural private selling exhibition in our new gallery, S2. The exhibition will coincide with the launch of the Sam Francis Catalogue Raisonné of Canvas and Panel Paintings, 1946 – 1994, published by the Sam Francis Foundation and University of California Press.