LiveAuctioneers.com kicks off UK summer auction season with lively June sales

July 9, 2007

Online bidding boosts prestigious sales at Bloomsbury Auctions, Phillips de Pury & Co. and British music industry’s Silver Clef Benefit Auction  

LONDON – LiveAuctioneers.com, the premier destination for online participation in top-quality auctions worldwide, initiated the summer season with a series of outstanding June auctions in the United Kingdom. Overall, the company reported record sales figures for the month, facilitating live Internet bidding in nearly 300 auctions worldwide.   The day before the official start of summer, a 52-piece collection of works by Andy Warhol went under the hammer at Bloomsbury Auctions and on LiveAuctioneers.com. The Warhol Collection, publicised as the first-ever auction devoted solely to the prolific master's works, saw the most-active Internet bidding participation in Bloomsbury’s history with LiveAuctioneers.  

Phillips de Pury also celebrated two firsts with LiveAuctioneers.com, on June 22. For the first time, the auction house offered live online bidding through LiveAuctioneers.com at its temporary auction rooms in London. The auction was also Phillips de Pury's inaugural Exposure sale, dedicated to artists working in the vanguard of contemporary photography. The sale offered 50 works, the majority of which had never before been seen at auction in Europe. The highlight of the Exposure sale was Desiree Dolron's Old-Masters-inspired portrait of a young woman, Catja, who inspired her series Xteriors. The haunting and ethereal Xteriors II set a new auction record price for the widely collected artist, at £64,800.  

LiveAuctioneers.com concluded the month of June by giving bidders access to the previously private, star-studded Silver Clef Benefit Auction, where items as varied as a guitar signed by the surviving members of Led Zeppelin and a jacket worn by Madonna on her most-recent concert tour were offered to the world. The prestigious charity event took place on June 29 at London's Park Lane Hilton and raised more than £420,000 for Nordoff-Robins Music Therapy, a charity strongly supported by British recording artists. The highest-selling lot was a Raymond Weil watch from the Swiss firm's Don Giovanni Collection, co-designed by British soul sensation Lemar, which earned £35,000.