In yesterday's post we looked at cool Christmas gifts that you may spot at exclusive sales organised by auction houses, highlighting how contemporary lots are often aimed at younger collectors. But another point to make about many auctions organised nowadays is that they often end up including not just pieces that younger people may find intriguing, but also striking works that you rarely see in museums as well.
Check out for example another auction that will be on in a few days' time at Sotheby's. The auction in question is dedicated to French designer René Lalique.
There are some superb pieces in the upcoming auction "Claude H. Sorbac : la collection d'une vie, René Lalique", among the others the "Dragonflies and Ferns" glass, enamel and diamond necklace (circa 1902-1904; Estimate: 250,000 – 400,000 EUR).
Composed of a series of moulded and glazed glass motifs highlighted with enamel, circular-cut and rose diamonds, this piece was often exhibited between 1998 and 2001 in different events at New York's Cooper-Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, Washington International Gallery, the Dallas Museum of Art, Yokohama's Sogo Museum of Art, Tokyo's Metropolitan Teien Art Museum and Kyoto's National Museum of Art.
The auction also includes the preparatory drawing (ink, pencil and gouache on tracing paper) for the "Dragonflies and Ferns" necklace, which means that wealthy collectors or museums could buy something truly unique if they managed to get both the lots.
Designers who love technology may also use these auctions to spot some pieces that they may try and recreate with state of the art techniques. For example, the Lalique auction features the leather, enamel, glass and citrine collar "Chantecler", a unique openwork leather piece embroided with silk, depicting roosters applied with enamel and accented by glass berry motifs (while the clasp collet-set incorporates a cabochon citrine).
This is another superb piece and, if you look at it from a distance, you get the impression it may be made not with soft leather but with some kind of iridescent rigid or semi-rigid material like mother-of-pearl. Maybe a clever designer could try and recreate it using 3D printing or may move from it to create a new 3D printed piece. Is anybody up for the challenge?
