The Market |
This week's top lots
December 18, 2009 | 
What: Ten églomisé panels from the "Birth of Aphrodite" by Jean Dupas, c. 1934
Where: Sotheby's New York (December 17, 20th Century Design)
Estimate: $200,000-300,000
Sold For: $512,500
These amazing art deco panels come from one of the four reverse-painted glass murals that Dupas created for the Grand Salon of the S.S. Normandie—the largest and most luxurious ocean liner of its day. The rare surviving panels—some of which are in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art—were removed from the ship's interior just before the Normandie, while being converted for use as a troopship during World War II, was destroyed by a fire.
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The Market |
This week's top lots
December 11, 2009 |
What: Pair of chairs, late 19th century
Where: Rago Arts (December 5, Estate Sale)
Estimate: $500-700
Sold For: $390,400
This pair of American Aesthetic Movement chairs, which were inherited by the daughter-in-law of a Philadelphia-area couple and reportedly stored in a boiler room for forty years, are believed to be the work of Louis Comfort Tiffany or an associated firm.
The Market |
This Week's Top Lots: November 30 - December 4
December 4, 2009 | Sotheby's London/November 30, Romanov Heirlooms
Total: £7 million
* 25th wedding anniversary four-color gold cigarette case by Fabergé for Grand Duchess Maria Pavlovna and Grand Duke Vladimir Alexandrovich, 1899 £612,450 (estimate £50,000-70,000)
* Jewelled three-color gold cigarette case by Fabergé, 1899-1908 £601,250 (estimate £25,000-35,000)
* Two-color gold and enamel box by Fabergé with a note from Emperor Nicholas II, c. 1896 £601,250 (estimate £70,000-90,000)
Sotheby's London/November 30, Russian Art Evening Sale
Total: £4.1 million
* Alexandra Exter, Venice,1925 £1 million (estimate £900,000-1,200,000)
* Konstantin Alexeevich Korovin, Café D'Angleterre £337,250 (estimate £200,000-300,000)
* Ivan Konstantinovich Aivazovsky, The Bay of Yalta £325,250 (estimate £170,000-250,000)
Sotheby's London/December 1, Russian Art Day Sale
Total: £4.3 million
* Grigory Gluckmann, Composition £223,250 (estimate £100,000-150,000)
* Alexei Alexeevich Harlamoff, Young Girl in Profile £217,250 (estimate £120,000-180,000)
* Dmitry Grigorievich Levitsky, Portrait of Prince Alexander Prozorovsky, 1779 £193,250 (estimate £50,000-70,000)
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The Market |
Lalique up close at Heritage Auctions
December 4, 2009 | Starting tomorrow, December 5, New Yorkers will have a chance to see up close over one hundred examples of art glass by René Lalique—one of the leading names in the decorative arts—when Heritage Auctions begins the preview for its inaugural 20th century design auction in Manhattan. For those that can't make the sale in person, we've gathered a slideshow of some of our favorites, presented here in extreme detail to capture the exceptional beauty of Lalique's organic design (To see full images click here).
Assembled from six private collections—including the personal collection of Lloyd Glasgow who joined the company in the 1950s and retired as president in the 1990s—the Lalique portion of the sale presents a chronological history of the firm's glasswork from art deco icons such as the "Victoire" mascot (estimate $15,000-20,000) to contemporary limited edition works, including a full-size table of brilliant amber glass with a cactus-pattern pedestal base (estimate $80,000-120,000) that was originally designed by Marc Lalique in 1951 but produced in 2006. While many pieces in the sale are rare, several—such as perfume bottles and glass brooches—have modest estimates that are the perfect enticement for budding collectors.
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The Market |
Stampede
December 3, 2009 | Texas is full of cattlemen, but few with the style and panache of Derrill Osborn, whose "herd" was offered at the Dallas Auction Gallery in October. Best known for shaping decades of men's fashion—he headed that division at Neiman Marcus for more than twenty years—Osborn has been a "cattleman" ever since his great-grandfather whittled him a little wooden cow when he was a child. In the ensuing years he amassed a collection of bovine art that spanned centuries, continents, and mediums and included German wood carvings, nineteenth- and twentieth-century paintings, Empire furniture, and Staffordshire figures and other ceramic forms decorated with cattle motifs. The appeal of cows, he says, is that they always look so content. But the collection had overrun his house, and he decided it was time to make sure his vaches found happy homes elsewhere.
Osborn's cows may have been contented, but not so all of his bulls, to judge by two Staffordshire figure groups and a spill vase with figures on the theme of bullbaiting offered at the sale. A regrettable blood sport in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in which a tethered bull was set upon by dogs, bullbaiting—occasionally called bull-beating—was abolished in Britain in 1837.
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Pickle Dish, American China Manufactory (Bonnin and Morris), Philadelphia, 1771-72. Soft-paste porcelain with lead glaze; height 4 3/16, width 4 1/2
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