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Phillips have released details of a bumper sale of Contemporary art to be held in New York on May 13. The announcement came as art trade rumours persist about the reasons for the auction house postponing their May 6 sale of Impressionist and Modern art until June at the earliest.

While Pelé’s shirt received nearly all the post-sale plaudits, it wasn’t the only piece of football history to go under the hammer at Christie’s South Kensington (17.5/10% buyer’s premium) last week, and CSK was not the only London room offering a sale of football memorabilia.

THE Prince of Wales feathers to this Victorian gold fringe necklace, right, revealed that it was manufactured by Robert Phillips of Cockspur Street, London, whose signature the royal feathers were, but it may as well have been the work of any number of designers working in the Etruscan Revival style during this period – Carlo Giuliano, John Brogden or Augusta Castellani.

Is there a future for Phillips de Pury & Luxembourg (15/10% buyer’s premium) now that Bernard Arnault and the financial might of the LVMH group have distanced themselves from the company and the enormous guarantees it was paying to secure high-value consignments?

From the time commission bids began to come in, it was plain one item would tower above everything else at the 558-lot Harrogate sale held by Morphets (15/10% buyer’s premium) on March 7 – the Archibald Knox silver wine flagon shown right.

Echoing encouraging sentiments of provincial auctioneers across the UK, Bristol Auction Rooms specialist David Rees felt “the trade were more comfortable buying for stock” at his March sale than in previous months, adding: “It was the best sale we’ve had since November.”

We reported in last week’s Antiques Trade Gazette's Art Market pages on the Ellekilde, Copenhagen sale and reflected on the popularity of Scandinavian interiors. An altogether different Danish artist to enjoy success at that sale was Gerda Wegener (1885-1940), a magazine illustrator, whose work proves especially popular with an American audience.

LONDON: THE trade are being warned about credit card cloning after several incidents in London in the past few months. In mid-January, a King’s Road gallery sold a French 19th Century bronze figure to a customer, and was paid with a credit card which, though authorised at the time, now appears to have been fraudulent.

SOTHEBY’S former chairman, A. Alfred Taubman, convicted in December of conspiring with rival auction house Christie’s to fix fees charged to sellers, must now wait until April 22 for sentencing.

A GROUP of investors has taken control of both Pittsburgh’s Dargate Auction Gallery and ewolfs, the troubled Cleveland-based dotcom enterprise.

With less than a month until the crunch series of Impressionist and Modern Art sales in New York, it is still not clear whether Phillips will be joining Sotheby’s and Christie’s at sales which netted the company $124m last year.

The continued demand for Art Nouveau and the ageless appeal of the female nude provided a winning combination at the sale held by Richard Winterton (11% buyer’s premium) at Burton-on-Trent on March 13.

IN 1528 Albrecht Dürer wrote: “There lives no man upon earth who can give a final judgement upon what the most beautiful shape of a man may be; God only knows that.” As five exhibitions highlight, artists love to expose all the inconsistency of the human form, be it scrawny or rotund.

This silver novelty bookcase 121/2in (32cm) high, pictured right, marked for George Betjemann & Sons 1907, drew huge interest both before the sale and when it went under the hammer at Bonhams’ Knightbridge rooms on March 12. It left the auctioneers’ £300-400 estimate standing as it was pursued to £4300.

KEN PAUL COLLECTION: This bizarre late-19th century mahogany longcase timepiece, right fashioned as a coffin and containing a human skeleton, was the most extraordinary offering in what was itself a highly unusual sale held by Sotheby’s (20/15/10% buyer’s premium) in Bond Street from March 13-15.

Neales-Kedleston Hall: The period between the wars and post-1945 saw the dissolution of many English country houses. The economic turmoil caused by conflict saw aristocratic families in dire financial straits and for many the only solution was to sell up and ship out.

“Pistol Sir – yes Sir – here you are sir – Revolver – most improved construction – 6 chambers sir – 2 for your wife – 2 for the destroyer of your happiness – 2 for yourself Sir – all the rage Sir – sell hundreds of ’em for bridal presents Sir !!!”....

Above right: the ‘Library’ portion of the Ken Paul Collection, a three-day sale of ‘antique’ film props that raised £1.5m at Sotheby’s last month was not large and was dispersed in eight job lots, but someone will doubtless have fun sorting through this collection of several hundred deeds, wills, leases, probates, transfers etc., mostly on vellum and largely 19th century, but including a few made-up props.

When Sotheby’s sold the second and third parts of Sotheby’s sale of the Jammes collection in Paris on March 21 and 22, the highest price was paid, as expected, for this exceptional collection of correspondence from the French father of photography, Nicéphore Niépce, and his son Isidore, featuring a heliographic reproduction of a Dutch print.

Christie’s and Sotheby’s may not have had a vintage New York Asian Art series this March, but private and trade buyers continued to compete for the best quality fresh-to-the-market entries.