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O n view at Sotheby’s New York from June 6-11 before heading to the auction block June 11-12, 168开奖官方开奖网站查询:Design Week features 🔯three sales showcasing masterworks spanning over a century of innovation and exceptional taste in design.
Read on the explore 15 extraordinary highlights of what’𓆏s on offer.
On June 11, Important Design presents a curated survey of the last century, ranging from notable examples of Art Deco to postwar and contemporary design.
Included in the sale is a selection of works by Les Lalanne, led by François-Xavier Lalanne’s Grand Rhinocrétaire II, as well as an important seating group by Jean Royère, including an Ours Polaire sofa and a Sculpture armchair.
François-Xavier Lalanne’s ‘Grand Rhinocrétaire II’
François-Xavier Lalanne, working in close collaboration with his wife, Claude, reshaped the boundaries of sculpture and design in the 20th century. Among his most emblematic and intellectually ambitious works is the 168开奖官方开奖网站查询:Rhinocrétaire – a monumental bronze rhinoceros that opens to reveal a fully function🍸al writing desk. At once fantastical and deliberate, it stands as a defining expression of Lalanne’s bel♏ief that beauty and function, imagination and practicality, can all live together symbiotically in his artistic creations.
Frank Lloyd Wright’s Personal Spindle Print Table
This rare poplar “168开奖官方开奖网站查询:Print Table,” executed for the home and studio of Frank Lloyd Wright in Oak Park, IL, represents an iconic form crafted by the exalted 20th-century American architect. One of just two commissioned for the architect’s home and studio – and therefore one of the first print tables the architect ever creat༒ed – the masterpiece at hand stands as a prototype of one🐈 of Frank Lloyd Wright’s most innovative and recognizable furniture creations, and furthermore as the very surface upon which architectural masterworks were likely drafted.
Diego Giacometti’s ‘Mirror’
This rare plaster frame, signed and dated 1942 by Diego Giacometti, offers a unique glimpse into the early creative expression of an artist better known for his later bronze furnishings. Executed in plaster – a fragile and seldom-surviving medium – the frame carries not only the mark of the artist’s hand but the imprint of a significant historical moment. It once belonged to Pierre Berès, the legendary Freౠnch bookseller, publisher and collector whose friendship with the Giacometti family provides a rich contextual backdrop for this iꦕntimate and poetic object.
Jean Royère’s ‘Ours Polaire’ Sofa
Jean Royère’s 168开奖官方开奖网站查询:Ours Polaire and 168开奖官方开奖网站查询:Sculpture designs rank among the most coveted creations in the canon of 20th-centur🌃y design. Embodying the elegance, lyricism and playful sophistication for which🦋 Royère is renowned, these forms exemplify his singular ability to merge comfort and luxury with sculptural artistry. Together, they reflect the full breadth of Royère’s visionary approach – at once whimsical and refined, boldly sculptural yet eminently functional and livable.
Jean Prouvé’s Unique Lift-Up Table
In 1943, Jean Prouvé was commissioned by Mr. Labourier to design a 168开奖官方开奖网站查询:unique lift-up table for the Labourier Plant in Mouchard, France. Known for his pioneering use of industrial materials and functional aesthetics, Prouvé created a piece that e🍌xemplified resilience and adaptability. Ingeni🌊ously designed, the table folds up flat against the wall, clearing space for other functions – a practical solution for a working industrial environment. Crafted during a period of material rationing, it reflects Prouvé’s mastery of metalwork and purposeful design. This rare commission underscores his ability to blend utility with refined engineering under challenging conditions.
June 11 will also see the first-ever live auction dedicated to the dramatic sculptural work of master ceramicist Axel Salto.
Salto is remembered today for his ceramic vases, tiles, bowls, lighting and pure sculpture, all imbued with surgi🍌ng vitalism. The contours of these objects are devised to maximize visual drama. Glazes course lavishly down their sides, streaming and pooling like water over rocks in deep forest, rendering each piece utterly u꧃nique.
– Salto Texts by Glenn Adamson
Can Clay Come to Life? Why Axel Salto’s Ceramics Still Feel Alive
Unique Vase in the ‘Sprouting’ Style
No two moments on this 168开奖官方开奖网站查询:sensational and seductive vase are alike. The form seethes with shapes, some rounded, some spiky, all made visceral by the deep-red oxblood glaze (a color first developed by Chinese ceramic technicians in the 18th century). Underneath the active surface is the severe profile of a classical vase, but that shape is overwhelmed by the thick carapace of sprouting ornaments. The🧔se would have been made in separate small molds and then applied by hand to a thrown form, a compositional method that allowed Salto to improvise during the process of assembly, as if he were creating a collage. The finished effect is extremely suggestive, possessed of what Salto himself would have called “daemonic” potency.
Rare Vase in “Blue Mussel” Glaze
Salto and his colleagues at Royal Copenhagen called the beautiful glaze featured on this piece “168开奖官方开奖网站查询:Blue Mussel,” and indeed it has the aqueous quality of an undersea scene. The variable thickness of the mottled glaze, while it results from unpredictable flows in the kiln, clearly picks out the pictorial design, which is grafted on to the rather formal profile of an upright classical vase form. The piece is reddish in appearance where the underlying clay body shows through, and a deeper cobalt blue where the glaze pools thickly on꧃ the surface, as at the base and in the interstices between the individual motifs. These do suggest shells but could also be interpreted as seedpods and leaves. Salto’s naturalism was purposefully promiscuous, intended to suggest the abstract idea of bursting fecundity: not a “still life,” but rather its opposite.
Unique Vase in the ‘Sprouting’ Style
With its rich oxblood glaze and dramatic spikes, this is one of Salto’s 168开奖官方开奖网站查询:most dynamic designs. Its first impression is of barely contained violence, as if the vase had been weaponized. Look more closely, though, and this initial sense of aggression gives way to an appreciation of the marvelous glaze and the sensitive modeling of the form. The pointed protrusions have slightly rounded tips, and at the top and bottom recede into the form, modulating the transition to the rim and foot. As is the case for most of the works produced in Salto’s studio, the work was made by applying these individually modeled components to a thrown cylinder. He carefully calibrat🥂ed such pieces, pushing them as far as he could without exaggeration. “It is exactly the last little ‘further out’ that determines the artwork’s decisive boldness,” he wrote, “a matter of millimeters.”
Unique Bird Vase
Salto was entranced by Ovid’s Metamorphoses, with its myriad tales of transformation, trickery and transcendence. He illustrated translations of the ancient text, made images of stories that particularly captivated him – notably, the myth of Diana and Actaeon – and indeed, considered art itself to be an act of magical transmutation. In this 168开奖官方开奖网站查询:unique vase, we 🤪see the principle of metamorphosis fully realized. The vessel is conceived as if it were shape-shifting into a flock of birds. They emerge from the neck and shoulders, taking their first blinking glimpses into the sun. The effect is surrealistic, but the overall form is stately, recalling pots from antiquity: Roman gryphons and Chinese phoenixes.
‘Summer’ Vase
In this 168开奖官方开奖网站查询:early vase design, made at Royal Copenhagen using an original mold, we see Salto fusing the representational approach of his earlier paintings and prints with a newly emergent language of abstraction. The composition is densely populated with incident – birds, branches and blossoms. It is in effect a landscape in the round, anticipating other significant works such as The Road to Grasse (1936), which in tur♎n have affinities to Sung Dynasty ceramics that symbolize sacred mountains. Salto also associated the glaze used on this pot with that historic context. In his 1946 essay “The Nature of Ceramics,” he wrote of his deep respect for this tradition: “The Chinese, who kept a thousand kilns in a thousand cities firing for a thousand years, took the path of patience and perseverance and ended up knowing absolutely everything about clay.”
Design Week concludes on June 12 with an auction of masterworks by Louis Comfort Tiffany, featuring exceptional works from The Ann and Robert Fromer Collection.
The auction showcases the diverse range of Tiffany's acclaimed artistic productio🌠n, featuring exceptional examples of windows, leaded lamps, favrile glass, pottery and fancy goods. Leading the auction is a spectacular stained glass window featuring Clematis and Tulips from one of the firm's rare domestic commissions.
The Stillman Memorial Window
The extraordinary 168开奖官方开奖网站查询:Stillman Memorial Window stands as a luminous embodiment of Tiffany’s lifelong aestheti♋c conviction: that all “true” art is rooted in Nature. A brilliant example from a rare Tiffany Studios residential commission, the present window was created for the Stillman Wing of the Brooklyn Home for Aged Men and Couples at the request of Stillman’s daughters. Unlike Tiffany’s ecclesiastical windows, the piece uniquely combines transparent and leaded Favrile glass in a seamless effort to integrate the home's interior with the exterior landscape.
Set within a double-arched frame, a pebbled teal-blue trellis supports slender, meandering olive-green vines bearing delicate pink clematis blossoms, lending the distinct impression 🥀of flowers rustled in a gentle breeze. Below, opalescent tulips in apricot, amber, golden-yellow and cream emerge among lush blue and yellow-tinted green leaves. The central panels remain largely transparent – only select vines and leaves are delicately scattered throughout – creating a rare, symbiotic relationship between the glass composition and the world beyond.
‘Poinsettia’ Floor Lamp
Tiffany, an expert botanist and brilliant marketer, took advantage of the Poinsettia’s appeal by using it for several models of 168开奖官方开奖网站查询:lamp shades. Surprisingly, examples of the design did not appear until around December 1908, when Tiffany Studios introduced the version as a large chandelier in a New York Times advertisement. Not surprisingly, the holiday connection was prominently promoted: “The ‘Poinsettia,’ executed like all the Tiffany Studios shades under the personal direction of Mr. Lo🉐uis C. Tiffany, possesses a distinc▨tive Christmas atmosphere. Gives the rich reds and greens of the Poinsettia with remarkable fidelity.”
Three years later, the company advertised the table lamp version as a “practical Christmas gift of permanent value” and “most accepta🅺ble as remembrances.”
Rare Early ‘Peacock’ Table Lamp
The peacock was one of Louis Comfort Tiffan🙈y’s favorite decorative motifs, and he incorporated it into the full range of his work, from leaded glass windows to jewelry. He was obviously intrigued by the vivid iridescent blue, purple and green sheen of the 🌊bird’s feathers.
The trumpet-shaped base of 168开奖官方开奖网站查询:this extraordinary lamp is composed of opaque olive glass finely decorated with an ornate pulled-feather design in shades of mauve, violet, navy, emerald and cream. The lower half of the body is further enhanced with cobalt peacock “eyes” of varying sizes bordered in iridescent gold. The exterior is additionally augmented with a pock-marked Cypriote finish and a multi-hued iridescence. The base encl💖oses a beautifully patinated fuel cannister finely cast with peacock plumes. An ornate Favrile glass shade, of opalescent white glass with an intricate Damascene design and a mirrored orange iridescence, sits securely on the cannister’s fitted mount.
Tiffany & Co., Mounted Scent Bottle
Tiffany & Co., the world-famous jewelry firm owned by Charles Tiffany, Louis’ father, was the only enterprise in New York City, besides Tiffany Studios, permitted to retail the diverse products manu♓factured by Louis’ various firms. Tiffany & Co., in addition to marketing Favrile glass objects, purchased approximately 200 pieces between 1897 and 1909 t💜o which they designed and added custom-made silver or gold mounts.
The object here was possibly part of a series of approximately 15 168开奖官方开奖网站查询:scent bottles, at the time referred to as vinaigrettes, several of which were produced specifically for Tiffany & Co.’s exhibition at the 1900 Paris Exposition Universelleඣ. The gold mounts and caps were designed by Paulding Farnham (1859-1927), the head of the firm’s jewelry department as well as a board member. Trained under the guidance of his predecessor, Edward C. Moore, Farnham’s designs featured inset gems and impeccable ꦓmetalsmithing as perhaps best illustrated in “,” which is in the permanent collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
