Beyond Celebrity

Man Ray Constantin Brancusi Henri Matisse Giorgio de Chirico Paul Klee Marcel Duchamp James Ensor Thomas Gainsborough

Send a letter to the Editor

Save to Del.icio.us Digg this

Every single piece of German silver-gilt was sold, the rarer objects fetching unheard of prices. An armillary sphere carried by the Greek mythological figure of Chronos (Time), represented as a man in the nude, his silver body fitted with silver-gilt wings, rose to €781,000 ($1 million), more than doubling expectations. Extremely rare in today’s market, the object, which was made by the Augsburg goldsmith Jakob Mannlich in Troppau (now Opava in the Czech Republic), dates from about 1630, but is hardly the greatest work ever by a German goldsmith of the Baroque Age.

By comparison, the one object worthy of the greatest museums, a silver-gilt dish made between 1562 and 1586 by Abraham I. Lotter of Augsburg, almost looked reasonable at €661,000 ($855,267). Set in the center with the enameled coat of arms of the Margrave Karl II of Baden-Durlach dated 1561, the vessel commemorates the German prince’s conversion to the Augsburg Confession, which is the founding text of Lutheran Protestantism as defined by Jacob Heerbrand. That year, the Margrave declared his adherence to the new faith at the Protestant Congress in Naumburg. With such a weight of history, the dazzling object was worth as much as you can pay.

Not so the dozens of pieces that doubled, tripled or quadrupled their high estimates. Immediately before the armillary sphere, a silver-gilt cup and cover made around 1660 by Johann Adam Kienlin the Elder in the Swabian city of Ulm went up to €113,800 ($147,246), more than four times the highest price expected by Christie’s. Kienlin the Elder was a prolific artist, as the catalogue noted.

Pieces described in the most unflattering terms, such as a silver-gilt-mounted nautilus cup with the goldsmith’s mark of Elias Adam of Augsburg corresponding to the years 1711-1715, were as vividly fought over as if they had been unobtainable treasures. A damning caveat in the catalogue entry specified that comparison with "a similar nautilus shell dated 1720 with the same stem and mounts sold [at] Sotheby’s, Geneva, 18 May 1992" indicates that "the present nautilus shell [in the Paris sale] is probably a replacement and the mounts [were] adapted to fit." Bluntly put, Christie’s saw it as a partly modern piece with badly altered 18th-century mounts. The €10,000 to €15,000 estimate (plus the 25 percent sale charge) seemed very optimistic, and yet in the event, Christie’s was shown to have erred on the side of caution. The made-up object went up to a mind-boggling €133,000 ($172,089).

The bullishness displayed by the buyers in such a highly specialized field as German silver-gilt wares of the 16th and 17th centuries, and on such a large scale (82 lots), has no precedent.

Had the rage to buy stopped there, it would have been amazing enough. But when the auction switched to Art Deco, plus a few more recent pieces made in the spirit of Art Nouveau, enthusiasm rose to truly stratospheric heights.

Right at the beginning, a pair of candelabra in gilt brass and galvanized copper, signed in 1990 by the designer Claude Lalanne, tripled their estimate at €253,000 ($327,357). Two lots down, an ornamental carp in gold patinated resin, 11 inches long, multiplied the high estimate tenfold as it brought €97,000 ($125,508). Its style, reminiscent of sleek Art Deco animal sculpture, is decidedly passé. More surprising still, a pair of Macassar ebony armchairs modestly catalogued as "anonymous French work circa 1930" shot up to €133,000 ($172,089), nine times the high estimate. Unless someone spotted some period reproduction with a caption naming the designer, this is a staggering figure.

Naturally, new world auction records were established. A pair of monumental vases commissioned to Jean Dunand by the organizers of the Paris Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes in 1925 became the most expensive works by the craftsman at €3.1 million ($4 million). A side table (console, in French), with a black marble top supported by three silvered bronze cobras exhibited in the 1925 show by its maker Albert Cheuret, raised the auction record for the craftsman to €313,000 ($405,000), and a large woolen rug with a complex geometrical design inspired by pre-Columbian stone architecture from Mexico designed in the late 1920s by the famous Brazilian-born Art Deco artist Ivan da Silva Bruhns climbed to €229,000 ($296,303).