Mostly sedate, the pace of the sale picked up when seven pieces by the idiosyncratic sculptors Claude and François-Xavier Lalanne came on the block. The costliest, Rhinocéros Mécanique, 1976, a 9¾-inch-high copper sculpture with hidden compartments (est. $24–35,000), went for $98,500. But the most enthusiastic bidding of the day was for a collection of 20 pieces of 1960s avant-garde Italian jewelry, all of which found buyers. A silver-and-lacquer bracelet by Lucio Fontana (est. $8–12,000) fetched the top price, $68,500.

Several major items passed, including big-ticket lots by Ponti, Diego Giacometti and Zaha Hadid. Summing up the day, Nicholas Kilner, the department’s head of sale, says, “The really good things did well, but people are less willing to take chances on the middle ground.”

Sotheby’s played it safe—and smart—on June 14 with a tight auction of just 150 lots, including 25 Nakashima and 16 Tiffany pieces, most of them new to the market and carrying conservative estimates. The result was the best sales total of the season: $7,408,250.

The Saturday-morning event drew a good crowd and mostly lively bidding, although, as at all the sessions, several choice offerings disappointed. The top lot was an unusual circa 1905 Apple Blossom table lamp by Tiffany (est. $250–350,000). Competitive bidding drove the price up to a surprising $932,500, a record for the model at auction, paid by an anonymous longtime Tiffany collector.

The other key Tiffany offerings were a circa 1910 Wisteria table lamp (est. $500–700,000), which went to Adriana Friedman, of Delorenzo, for $602,500, a bargain compared with the Wisteria that brought a record $881,000 in last December’s sale at Sotheby’s New York, and a circa 1910 Dragonfly table lamp (est. $120–180,000), which went to the New York consultant Barbara Deisroth for $230,500. Some Tiffany objects, however, fell flat, including an exceptional Magnolia floor lamp (est. $700–900,000) and a rare 1890s oak armchair (est. $180–240,000).

Another unexpected failure was a pair of 1949 Prouvé lacquered-steel porthole doors (est. $100–150,000) identical to those that brought $680,000 at Sotheby’s New York in 2004. A smaller but similar aluminium pair (est. $70–90,000 each) sold at Phillips the previous day for $85,000 apiece. “It just goes to show how fickle the market is,” says the department head, James Zemaitis.

There was more demand for museumworthy industrial-art objects. Two persistent bidders competed for a circa 1930 aluminum-and-wood locomotive sculpture by the brothers Jan and Joël Martel, which finally went to a French collector for $386,500 (est. $70–90,000). Another pair of bidders pushed the price for a rare circa 1930 zebra-hide armchair with metal arms by Paul Frankl (est. $20–30,000) to a stunning $230,500. One of the most highly anticipated lots, an Isamu Noguchi prototype aluminum table made for the Aluminum Corporation of America in 1957, brought $290,500 (est. $100– 150,000). (Only two pairs are known to exist, and the mate to this one sold at Wright in December 2006 for $132,000.)

The day’s—and the season’s—prize Nakashima was a 1989 Conoid dining table (est. $70–90,000), which went for $266,500. Four sculptural wood pieces by Wendell Castle fetched two or three times their high estimates, most notably a two-seat walnut sofa from 1967 (est. $40–60,000) that made $152,500. “People bought what looked good,” says Zemaitis, “and what could actually be used.”

Winding up the sale was a prefabricated pavilion made by the Japanese architect Shigeru Ban in 2007 as an exhibition space for the Finnish furniture producer Artek (est. $800,000–1.2 mil­lion). The 131-foot-long structure sold for $602,500 to the New York gallery Sebastian + Barquet, which also bought Noguchi’s Alcoa table. (The three-year-old gallery’s high-profile purchases include Newson’s Lockheed Lounge prototype at Sotheby’s in June 2006 for a then-record $968,000.)