PARIS, FRANCE.- Sotheby’s is pleased to announce the sale of Karl Lagerfeld’s remarkable collection of Modernist furniture, decorative arts, lamps and ceramics from the 1920s and 30s. The auction of approximately 240 lots taken from his house in Biarritz as well his apartment in Monaco will be held at the Galerie Charpentier in Paris on May 15, 2003 at 2:30pm.
A spirited collector with a particular interest in the decorative arts of the 20th century, Karl Lagerfeld has successively amassed and dispersed multiple collections over the years. With this auction, Mr. Lagerfeld continues a tradition of sales at Sotheby’s begun in 1991 with the sale of his collection of Memphis Furniture in Monaco. Mr. Lagerfeld, noted, “My career has offered me the opportunity to continuously explore new lands, and encounter radically different experiences. Collecting is one of the most exciting endeavors, and the objects that I have passionately assembled represent what I term ‘the roots of modernity.’ It is this modernity that I search for incessantly.”
The Lagerfeld collection was assembled according to the highest of standards of both quality and provenance, with the choice restricted to the sparest of forms expressing both originality and elegance. The collection comprises works by the key artists of the Modernist movement, including Jean-Michel Frank, Pierre Legrain, Marcel Coard, Alberto Giacometti, Elisabeth Eyre de Lanux, Eileen Gray, Emile-Jacques Ruhlmann, Paul Dupré-Lafon, Jean Besnard, Henri Simmen and Eugénie O’Kin. All of them were dedicated to the tenets of simplicity and line, executed in a harmonious range of colors from ivory to black and in varying shades of beige and brown.
It is very rare to find such a rich and important concentration of Jean-Michel Frank’s (1893-1941) work in one collection. More than 50 examples from Frank’s oeuvre, including several done in collaboration with Chanaux and Alberto and Diego Giacometti, will be offered in this sale, including: four rare ‘diabolo’ side-tables, two sheathed in vellum (est. $60/100,000) and two in cerused oak (pictured right, est. $80/120,000); a rare cerused oak low table with ‘pineapple’ legs (est. $50/80,000); and a vellum-veneered bed (est. $25/35,000). In addition to Frank’s furniture designs, this sale will present a Frank-designed chimney-piece, an exceedingly rare quartz table lamp and several plaster lamps and vases designed in association with Alberto Giacometti.
Pierre Legrain’s (1888-1929) early work with Paul Iribe came to the notice of couturier Jacques Doucet, for whom he designed book bindings and African-inspired cubist furniture. A number of his designs will be offered including a magnificent, rare parchment architect’s portfolio designed for the great milliner Jeanne Tachard’s villa at La Celle Saint Cloud. Covered in blue Moroccan leather, nickled metal and on a mahogany stand, this exceptional lot will be sold with two preparatory original watercolor drawings, annotated by Legrain (est. $40/60,000). Also designed for the same villa is an important ebonized-wood and galuchat coiffeuse with a large oval mirror, which is one of the artist’s most celebrated and published works (pictured left, est. $200/300,000).
Marcel Coard (1889-1975), who worked with many of the same avant-garde clients as Legrain and shared his penchant for African and cubist inspired furniture, disliked duplicating his designs, preferring to create unique pieces for his interiors. Several of his distinctive examples of work in cerused oak were collected by Mr. Lagerfeld, including a cerused oak rectangular table with undulating contours (est. $20/30,000), and two benches with geometric legs (est. $15/20,000).
The Irish-born Eileen Gray’s (1878-1976) long career spanned almost the entire 20th century. The Lagerfeld Collection features an important oak console table with black lacquer legs. Eileen Gray designed this table early in her career when she trained with the lacquer artist Sougawara and opened her shop Jean Désert from which she sold her designs for furniture, carpets, lamps and mirrors.
Designs by the American-born, Paris based designer Elizabeth Eyre de Lanux (1894-1996) rarely appear on the market. The sale will include three pairs of angular low-back armchairs (est. $40/60,000 each), a desk (est. $30/50,000) and a desk lamp (est. $5/8,000). Beginning in 1927, Eyre de Lanux collaborated with British carpet designer Evelyn Wyld, offering modernist designs in glass, wood and lacquer from their galleries in Paris and Cannes.
To complement the interiors of his residences, Mr. Lagerfeld added the refined ceramics of Henri Simmen, Eugenie O’kin, Emile Decoeur, Séraphin Soudbinine and Jean Besnard, and the distinctive Modernist lighting of Maison Desny and Boris Lacroix. Of the numerous objects, all of the highest quality, a particular highlight is a dressing mirror and a superb chrome ink stand by Emile-Jacques Ruhlmann, several vases with geometric decoration by Jean Dunand, a striking mirror by the Austrian Dagobert Peche, and finally a magnificent cement torso by Chana Orloff, dated 1918, that comes from the collection of the American artist Romaine Brooks.