ROME – The height of European chic half a century ago, lights from Ingo Maurer’s Uchiwa series have roared back into fashion. The Munich-based artist dubbed the ‘poet of light’ made his bamboo and lacquered rice paper pendants using traditional Japanese techniques of fan-making to create a series of organic forms.
Most were fashioned in the early to mid-1970s, and the survival rate for such delicate creations has not been great. The examples that come to market today can bring large sums – such as the €22,000 bid for this 1973 suspension light. The top lot of the Colasante Casa D’Aste Design and 20th Century Decorative Arts auction in Rome on November 22, it had been estimated at €6,000-€8,000 and ultimately sold for €26,820 ($29,200) with buyer’s premium.
MORETON-IN-MARSH, U.K. – This sterling silver scale model of the Lockheed TriStar aircraft was the top lot in Kingham’s November 24 Silver and Objects of Vertu sale in the Cotswolds region of England. The estimate was £600-£800, but it hammered at £4,800 and sold for £6,480 ($8,200) with buyer’s premium.
Measuring more than 4½in (37cm) in length, and with a wingspan of 12½in (32cm), the model aircraft was made in 1:72 scale and is complete with a wooden stand. The detail is so fine and exact that the plane’s wings depict the stabilizers, ailerons, rudders and elevators. The cargo and passenger doors, radar nose cone, cabin and cockpit windows are also represented with great accuracy.
The piece is fully hallmarked to the underside of the fuselage, confirming that it was made by the Nayler Brothers in London in 1976.
It was commissioned by a British Airways pilot, who consigned it for sale. In 1973, he traveled to Lockheed in Palmdale, California as part of a team of six experts tasked to ensure the TriStar’s smooth introduction into British Airways’ routes.
VIENNA – The sales at Leitz Photographica on November 24-25 included the personal collection of the late Yul Brynner (1920-1985), consigned by his daughter Victoria. Though best remembered on stage and screen, the Russian-born actor was also a talented photographer and Leica fan. Both passions were on display in this sale, with his original prints sold alongside some very rare black paint MP Leica cameras.
Brynner’s celebrity allowed him access to some of the factory’s most exclusive models, most of which were sold to professional photographers. With lovingly built-up patinas, original condition and perfect operational status in their favor, both his MP59 Leica and his MP60 Leica were individually estimated at €600,000-€700,000. They hammered for €1.2 million and €1.1 million respectively, and, with buyer’s premium, sold for €1.5 million ($1.6 million) and €1.3 million ($1.5 million) respectively.
Issued in 1956 as a model catering to the photojournalist, the original Leica MP – the P stands for professional – is among the rarest Leica models of all time. Of the 412 made, just 141 were black-paint versions.
RENTON, Wash. – Leading MBA Seattle Auction‘s November 30 sale of Fine Native and Western Arts was a monumental oil on canvas by realist painter Raymond Dabb Yelland (1848-1900). The artist, who trained in New York after serving in the Union Army during the Civil War, specialized in depicting what we now call the ‘big sky’ seashores and mountains of Northern California, where he moved in 1873. Large-scale canvases of the local landscape bathed in light were his forte, with this 6ft by 3ft 4in panorama from 1884 depicting the icy slopes of the majestic Mount Rainier (Tahoma) volcano in Washington state, with a cabin and a sole figure in foreground.
The painting had a label on the verso for the Hoover Gallery of San Francisco, although, as the archetypal boardroom picture, its most recent provenance was “a distinguished corporate collection in Washington state.” Offered in professionally cleaned and restored condition, it was estimated at $10,000-$20,000 but hammered for $80,000 and sold for $100,000 with buyer’s premium. According to Artprice, this represents a record sum for the artist at auction.
LONDON – An exceptional silver Breguet hump-backed carriage clock commissioned by carmaker Ettore Bugatti topped Bonhams’ Fine Clock Sale on November 29. Following competitive phone bidding, the clock sold towards the top end of its £100,000-£200,000 estimate, hammering for £170,000 and selling for £216,000 ($276,480) including buyer’s premium.
Like many engineering aficionados, Bugatti had a love for horology, and he chose an equally driven firm of clockmakers, Breguet of Paris, to manufacture his personal 50th birthday gift in 1931.
Breguet hump-backed carriage clocks were some of the most complex domestic timepieces of the period. This example, No. 759, took three years to complete, and its remarkable movement, housed in a silver case with a secret opening mechanism, has a perpetual calendar that accounts for leap days every four years. It retained its original velvet-lined travel case and keys along with its certificate, No. 3278.
Bonhams specialist James Stratton said, “The clock would have been a constant companion to Bugatti as he steered the company over the following years, producing some of the most powerful and beautiful cars of the 20th century. This really was a once-in-a lifetime opportunity to acquire an object steeped in both automotive and horological history.”
