Repletewith 18th-century Chinese,French and Meissen porcelainin French Rococo gilt-bronzemounts, the 70-lot saleof furniture and objets d’artamassed by the textiles magnateLéon Lévy is expectedto earn between €5 millionand €8 million ($7.3–11.8 million)at Sotheby’s Paris onOctober 2, making the collectionthe most important ofits type the firm has offered inthe French capital.

Lévy started purchasingart after fleeing his nativeEgypt in 1960 during presidentGamal Abdel Nasser?santi-Semitic regime. At 37,he settled in Geneva andbegan regularly attending andbuying at auctions, a practicehe continued almost up to hisdeath, last April. In fact, Lévysnared a pair of Kangxi (1662–1722) celadon potpourri vasesmounted in Louis XV ormoluat Sotheby’s Paris as recentlyas October 2006 for€760,000 ($1.1 million). Thissame pair—buoyed by therecord €2.7 million ($4 million)fetched at Sotheby’sLondon on July 8 by a Chineseporcelain potpourri vase fromthe Dimitri Mavrommatiscollection—is among four lotsin the October sale expectedto fetch around $1.5 million.The others are a circa 1720Régence Boulle marquetryconsole (est. €600,000–1 million;$883,000–1.8 million);a set of three Chinese vasesfrom the mid-18th century(est. €700,000–1 million; $1–1.5 million); and a pair of LouisXVI candelabra with Sèvrescaryatids (est. €800,000–1.2 million; $1.2–1.8 million),gifts to the future queenof Spain from the French king,her cousin, in 1785.

Mario Tavella, thehead of European furniture atSotheby’s, says that thefirm’s Galerie Charpentiersalesroom will be transformedduring the viewing,September 26 throughOctober 1, into a replica of thetop floor of the collector’soffice building, where he kepthis acquisitions. "Gold Mine" originally appeared in the October 2008 issue of Art+Auction. For a complete list of articles from this issue available on ARTINFO, see Art+Auction's October 2008 Table of Contents.