The sale offers a strong selection of post-war French design, anchored by an impressive selection of works by Jean Royère. To drive the auction it is the red Ours Polaire sofa. Jean Royère first designed the Polaire Ours sofa for the rooms he occupied in his mother's apartment at 234 rue du Faubourg-Saint-Honoré during the renovation of his residence in 1947.
Initially the design was slow to gain momentum, but soon the sofa became ubiquitous in Royère's interiors of the late 50s and early 60s. Today it is recognized as one of his most iconic and sought-after designs. The soft round shape of ours is in keeping with Royère's extravagant aesthetic and biomorphic style already in full force in the 50s. This lot retains the original thick red lining, a color Royère particularly favored for this design.
Jean Royère- Rare “OEuf” dresser, circa 1956 – Estimate: $100.000-150.000
Among Royère's works there is also a Boule armchair, acquired in 1957 by the architect Nadim Majdalani in Beirut. Majdalani had met Jean Royère in Paris and later, in the late 40s, the two opened a decoration and architecture office together, a syndicate that would continue into the 60s. Royère and Majdalani collaborated on numerous residential and commercial interiors throughout Lebanon which were experiencing great growth and new construction at the time. A rare chest of drawers is a further Royère highlight in the auction. The chest of drawers was created following the 1954 Œuf chair; while the chair has become a regular feature in his interiors, the other pieces of furniture are far less ubiquitous, documented in just a few places.
They will come Also offered are three lots of Claggett Wilson's Lewisohn Commission, including a sideboard, an extendable dining table, and a set of twelve dining chairs. Wealthy and progressive members of New York society in the early 1933th century, Mr. and Mrs. Sam Lewisohn found in Wilson a creative partner who conceived a highly original interior scheme. Wilson was an American modernist artist, whose paintings are now in the collections of the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Like many artists in New York City at this time, Wilson did not discriminate between mediums and in addition to painting and illustrating, he also drew costumes and scenery. The diversity of his designs suggests that he may have designed furniture other than that for the Lewisohn dining room, now the only known extant examples. An article on Claggett Wilson, probably published around 70 in the Boston Evening Transcript (a photocopy survives in the archives of one of Wilson's heirs), quotes Henri Matisse as remarking in the room: “It is perhaps the most ideal background for my pictures that I still have view. Discovered in the 1939s and held in private collections until now, this is the first time the current suite of furniture has hit the public market since XNUMX.
Claggett Wilson - Set of twelve dining chairs, circa 1930, estimate: $40.000-60.000 and Extendable Dining Table, circa 1930, estimate: $18.000-24.000
Jeroen Verhoeven – “Lectori Salutem”, 2010 – Estimate: $120.000-180.000
Max Lamb – “Poly Poly Chair”, designed 2006 – Estimate: $8.000-12.000.
To guide the selection contemporary for sale is Jeroen Verhoeven's Lectori Salutem. Verhoeven's work reinterprets Dutch design traditions through the means of modern technology, while observing how technology is developing at such a speed that we get used to it. His work gained global attention when she created the Cinderella Table, first created in 2005-2006. Jeroen went on to create Lectori Salutem in 2010, taking the process and materials to whole new levels. Working with the collaborative support of his twin brother Joep, Jeroen conceived a desk that would again be based on a historic silhouette, in this case drawn from a drawing by François Linke. Instead of being carved from one solid material, the piece was constructed of no fewer than 150 separate panels of stainless steel, assembled using 2.300 bolts. A selection of works by Taxile Doat from the Ann and Robert Fromer collection. Among the contemporary highlights is Max Lamb's Poly Poly Chair, a unique creation that comes from Lamb's new experiments on shape, material and technique, designed in 2006. The chair was created using the lost foam casting process, a highly unconventional production method for making furniture. Lamb dips a polystyrene foam model of the chair into sand, then pours molten bronze into it to dissolve the foam, giving the chair its unique, beaded surface. In this respect, the chair is both original and part of a larger series, with one example currently belonging to the permanent collection of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
The auction features ceramics from the collection of Ann and Robert Fromer, including examples by Paul Jeanneney, Taxile Doat, Auguste Delaherche and other. Previous collectors with a shared passion, the Fromers began acquiring decorative arts almost fifty years ago, a fact reflected in the conscious scope of their collection which spans the late XNUMXth and early XNUMXth centuries. The Fromers collection aptly narrates the historicism and innovative spirit of this period, demonstrating how the naturalism, Japanese influences and historical revivals of the late XNUMXth century gave way to the progressively graphic and painterly styles of Art Deco. In these early years of rediscovery, without the wealth of scholarship and market history now at our disposal, the Fromers nevertheless assembled a museum-worthy collection of the period's finest and most representative works.
Also present are two works of jewelery by Alexander Calder in the December design auction. Created at the height of Calder's recognition, when his designs adorned the fashionable intelligentsia of Europe and the United States, the delicate Cape Clasp and Six Circles brooch showcases the artist's ability to create wearable art. Delicately crafted by hand, each one-of-a-kind piece adds another dimension to the experience of Calder's work, allowing for a tangible, portable and highly personal level of engagement. Created around 1940, Six Circles is emblematic of the artist's technical prowess. The piece once belonged to artist Aviva Baal Teshuva and her husband Jacob, a renowned critic of modern and contemporary art who later wrote a publication about Calder. Created in 1936 and boasting an exceptional provenance, Cape Clasp was part of Mary Rockefeller Morgan's collection, having originally been acquired by Nelson A. Rockefeller, the noted collector, philanthropist and 41st Vice President of the United States, who was also Trustee, Treasurer and President of the Museum of Modern Art in New York at a time when the museum has begun to draw an equivalence between jewelery and contemporary art. An ancient work crafted in silver, the elegant closure plays with sculptural possibilities in the realm of functional clothing. A seemingly endless ring of shimmering silver speaks to the conceptual rigor of geometry, while asymmetrical fluted ends and hand-formed rivets recall the tender whim of Calder's early representational wire sculptures.
The Design Sale featuring works from the Florence Knoll Bassett collection. It may seem surprising that Knoll Bassett, the pioneer of the elegant aesthetic that came to define America's postwar office interior, collected nineteenth-century weather vanes. While these sculptures may seem incongruous, this pairing highlights the tradition of so-called primitive art and modernism with a long intertwined history. Wassily Kandinsky drew on Russian folk art for inspiration while Picasso and other artists working in Paris collected African sculpture. In the late 50s, when Florence discovered weather vanes "on a whim" during a trip to Paris with her second husband Harry Hood Bassett, early America continued to serve as an inspiration for American artists and major collectors. While Florence Knoll Bassett does not appear to have included weather vanes in any of her office interiors, they do appear in pictures of her summer home in Vermont. She purchased sails in Vermont and at the many antique stores located near the Knoll showroom in midtown Manhattan and treasured her collection enough to take it with her when she and Bassett moved to Coral Gables, Florida in 1965 and eventually to her last residency in Coconut Grove, where he showed an impressive group in a custom display.
