GOING, GOING… GOLD

The room is silent and the paddle lifts almost imperceptibly. Millions of pounds are riding on the next few seconds as the auctioneer scans the faces in the audience before bringing down the hammer.

Sounds like a film? For former Yavneh student Carmel Shayle it’s her day job, and she relishes the moment when another masterpiece is sold. At just 29, the Bushey-born art specialist has become one of the auctioneers at international auction house Phillips, where work by the world’s greatest artists routinely commands astonishing prices – including Jean-Michel Basquiat’s Untitled, which sold for $85 million (£63 million) in 2022.

The self-confessed art-history nerd adores Edouard Manet, Jan van Eyck and David Hockney (“a true icon, genuine superstar artist, icon of our times”), more of which later.

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She had a “lovely upbringing, where Friday nights were the highlight of my week”, confiding that, inspired by her beloved late father, she has “absolutely perfected cooking the proper Ashkenazi Jewish roast dinner”. She and her fiancé (“who will kill me if I don’t give him a mention”), enjoy hosting people for Shabbat.

After graduating from the Courtauld Institute of Art, Carmel’s first job was as an executive assistant at Christie’s when she was 20. It’s an experience she describes as “a good entry point into the art world”, explaining: “All of a sudden at this young age, you are seeing at the highest levels how companies work, how Christie’s works, how auction houses work; it was a magical time.”

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She continues: “Auction houses are the centre of the commercial art world. They draw in an international pool of clients, across so many different objects, prices, categories and specialists.”

She converted that first role into a permanent one in the classical art department before making the move, in 2021, to Phillips auction house, where she is now a senior manager in its client strategy department specialising in modern and contemporary art, across paintings, design and photography.

Client strategy, she says “is almost one of those secret departments. It is not advertised on our website, but every auction house has one.”

With a virtual Rolodex of hundreds of thousands of clients, part of
Carmel’s job is helping Phillips “better understand, engage, and build long-term relationships with our collectors, ensuring we’re connecting the right collectors with the right specialists and the right works of art at the right moment.”

“We engage with everyone,” she expands. “The young, the old, the experienced collectors, the ones making their first purchase. For each one, it’s a super-exciting moment.

“What is genuinely great about working with collectors is when they’re buying something. It’s so sentimental. There’s so much joy when they’ve finally won the work. It might be a painting that’s super rare to come by, and this is the opportunity they’ve been waiting for months, maybe years, to have in their collection.”

As for being an auctioneer, it’s a finely-tuned artistic production of its own. The preparation is “rigorous”, with Carmel and her colleagues “lucky enough to have
a creative director of a major West End London theatre give us training on pace, on tone, on confidence, on how to stand. Because in that moment it is almost like being an actor or a performer.”

And as the room of bidders waits expectantly, the auctioneer is front and centre of the action.

“You’re on the rostrum,” Carmel says. “It’s years of practice. Each auction house is responsible for training its own cohort of auctioneers, and every auctioneer you ever see, they’ll have their day job within the auction house. But then, let’s say one day a month, they’ll put their ‘out of office’ on and go down to the sale room.”

Everyone has a slightly different way of bidding. “It’s about having a beady eye and being able to think: ‘Is that a bid? Is that a bid? And sometimes you can ask rhetorically. You can say, ‘Austin, thank you so much. Was that a bid in the front row?’ And yes, you can nod your head. But for Phillips auctions, if you’re bidding in the room, you will need a paddle as well.”

Phillips is gearing up for the fifth installment of its dedicated David Hockney sales on 19 September; the famed artist died aged 88 on 11 June 2026.

Carmel explains that the auction is primarily made up of editions, not the original works, “which obviously go for millions. That means for a David Hockney, the price points are much more accessible and it attracts a much wider audience”.

She adds: “If you love Hockney, this is the best route into the market and the best way to have one hanging in your home.

“What is really fun about these auctions is obviously David Hockney had such a wide practice, and this will be able to offer things that are newer, older, different colours, different subjects.

“There’ll be something for everyone in that auction.”

Carmel’s father never got to see her realise her dream of being an auctioneer. “When I did it, I just thought, ‘Dad, I’ve done it, and you’d be so proud.’ That was one of the happiest moments of my career.”

She describes her passion for art as “one of those very rare things that exists in this modern world, which is still made by a human being and is communicating something non-verbal, maybe irrational”.

She adds: “Everyone has a different way of viewing the world and everyone has the same blank canvas.

“But every artist has come up with such a different view and such a different way of interpreting the things around them.

“Art can really transform ordinary things into something extraordinary.”