It would be impossible to describe Anthony’s extraordinary 57-year career at Christie’s in a many-volumed book. He achieved so much, travelling across the world, valuing and selling works of art and teaching silver, Fabergé, and objects of vertu specialists, in London, Paris, New York, Amsterdam, Rome and Geneva. For a man who hated flying he certainly clocked up the air-miles and was the calmest and greatest of travelling companions, that is unless the plan was struck by lightning, and especially if his Russian Art colleague slept through the whole drama. My first memory of Anthony was meeting him in our London office straight off the red eye from New York. I was apprehensive as I had already met the initially gruff Arthur Grimwade, Anthony’s former mentor. But Anthony could not have been more different, quietly spoken, with a great twinkle in his eye and a magnificent sense of humour.
To his colleagues he was so much more than a highly respected expert, he was a wonderful mentor and friend. Many of us, myself included, worked with Anthony for their entire careers. He taught us all how to examine an object accurately, how to value the rarest and unique, how to research and to write and, more importantly, how to enjoy the whole process.
Anthony had an intuitive passion for works of art, that he shared in a very natural and open way. You sensed his enthusiasm and energy, which was considerable. Even more prodigious considering his disability, which made physical work a challenge. But he was not one to shy away from gruelling valuations. At a fairy-tale castle in Baden-Württemberg he cheerfully counted 18,000 pieces of flatware with us, calling out ‘dummkopf’ if we lost count, despite a delicious lunch with the prince being on offer upstairs.
Anthony joined Christie’s in 1967 after a geography degree at Christ Church College, Oxford. He has also written to Sotheby’s. Christie’s thankfully replied first. You might think the art world was an unusual choice, but Anthony’s mother, the accomplished author and artist Phyllis Bray, was a deeply knowledgeable and passionate collector of Medieval and Renaissance jewellery, and perhaps Anthony shared her skills.
On the Front counter reception, under the beady eye of Leslie Leadbetter, there were practical lessons to be learnt. Not to judge a book by its cover. Anthony’s slightly relaxed posture whilst conversing with a man in a rather grubby mackintosh and battered hat was rewarded with a sharp jab and the hissed comment – “stand up straight when you speak to the King of Greece.” He almost made the same mistake with Mr Getty but never again.
No doubt spotting that Anthony had inherited his mother’s eye, the legendary Arthur Grimwade, asked Anthony if he would join the silver department. He flourished, travelling across Britain and abroad, enjoying the damp strongrooms, some so cold he and the secretary had to wrap themselves in bolts of green baize to avoid hypothermia. Even the sharp-tongued diarist James Lees Milne wrote how charming the young silver expert from Christie’s had been.
A pivotal moment in Anthony’s career was the opportunity to move to New York to help open Christie’s first saleroom in the U.S. He and Sara left London in 1976. To quote his jewellery colleague, now Chairman of Europe, Francois Curiel, ‘Anthony’s knowledge, expertise and professionalism quickly put Christie’s New York sales of silver, Fabergé and gold boxes on the map’.
Unlike London, where families had dealt with Christie’s for generations, you had to hunt for great objects in the United States. Once in a while, a piece landed on Anthony’s desk that he instinctively sensed was important. A Charles I wine goblet, sent from New Orleans, had always been called ‘The Bradford Cup’, but the family had no knowledge of its importance. The name piqued Anthony’s curiosity. Could it have some connection to the pilgrim father William Bradford? Through meticulous research Anthony traced the cup through wills and inventories for nine generations back to Governor Bradford. Its discovery made headlines, eventually being acquired by the Museum of American History and the Pilgrim Society of Massachusetts.
Whilst in New York, Anthony sold silver from many great collections, Pierpont Morgan in 1981, Ortiz Patino in 1986, and the Spanish treasure galleon Atocha in 1988. He valued and later sold the Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos collection silver, he even saw Imelda’s fabled shoe collection; the list could go on and on.
What stands out are Anthony’s long-standing friendships with his clients. Anthony – or even Tony to a few – helped and advised them for almost six decades. Simon Goodman, whom Anthony first met when he sold his grandfathers restituted collection, recently recounted how he and his wife ‘were both charmed by [Anthony’s] warmth and civility’, he wrote, ‘we harked by to a bygone era. But he wasn’t locked in an ivory tower. He remained accessible’. Values mentioned again and again. ‘Knowledgeable but never pompous, innovative and wise, always with a sense of humour’, wrote another.
The legendary collector Audrey Love appreciated these qualities. They first met in her 5th Avenue apartment. They remained friends after her departure to Florida. Anthony and Jeanne were entrusted with Audrey’s sale. Her executor and follow collector, Paul Doll, was a friend of Anthony’s until his death in 2020.
Other great clients were Jerry and Rita Gans. Anthony nurtured their interests over many years and they became firm family friends, with Rita often sending presents for Luke and Isobel. Jerry was in drainage, so to Anthony it was wonderful that he bought an unusual soup-tureen, used by a Mayor of York, as a travelling chamber-pot in the mayoral coach.
There were rare instances when things did not go to plan. Anthony was being driven back to the office by a Christie’s security guard with a valuable collection of gold boxes. The guard was driving at speed, a speed which the elderly pool car could not handle. Smoke poured from beneath the bonnet and they had to abandon it on the freeway and search for a yellow cab to get home.
Once Anthony was asked to hand carry a gold crown to London, delivered in a seemingly sturdy wood case. At the airport the guard handed him the box, which promptly fell to the pavement, leaving Antony holding just the lid. He and the startled Puerto Rican family beside him stared in horror and surprise at the crown glittering in its now topless case, with emeralds swinging back and forth. A repair with luggage straps ensured its safe arrival. It can now be seen in the Metropolitan Museum in New York. The second Christie’s upheaval in the Phillips household took place in 1996 when Anthony relinquished his role as head of specialist departments in New York, to return to London and lead the Silver Departments across the world. For the next thirteen years Anthony shuttled between sales in Europe and the states, guiding us all with his eagle eye and kind ear.
He worked closely with the Russian department, securing the sale of an Imperial Fabergé egg from the heir to the McDonald’s fortune. He took another on exhibition to Hong Kong. A deeply nerve-racking experience thanks to heavy handed security officials.
In 2001, the extraordinary sales of the Vienna Rothschild and Wernher collections saw Anthony in his element – researching the most complex and challenging works of art. For the extraordinary Kaiserheim reliquaries of St Sebastian and St Christopher he wrote a show stopping 32 page entry. St Sebastian is now in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London and St Christopher the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto. If there was a single event that summed up all of Anthony’s gifts and qualities, it must be the Yves Saint Laurent sale in 2009. The breath taking collection was meticulously researched by Anthony and his French team, Isabelle Cartier Stone and Marine de Cenival. They created a magnificent catalogue and we all worked together on the viewing with Anthony from 8 in the morning until midnight each day. Talking to clients, old and new, for hours on end, with record breaking final result.
Later that year Anthony ‘retired’, although the term was somewhat academic. As a hugely valued consultant he was always on call, for help with a valuation, a tricky hallmark, a word of sage advice, or a good gossip about the art world. But I hope it enabled Anthony to have the best of both worlds, time to be with his family in the lovely homes Sara created in London and Leafield, to plan and enjoy long holidays, and not to have to travel endlessly for work, although we did manage to tempt him back to Pairs with the promise of his favourite steak frites and rum baba.
To his colleagues, his clients and his friends in the academic world, Anthony was the fabric and soul of Christie’s. He was a wonderfully positive and kind guiding force in all our lives, who can never be replaced.
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