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Lot 101 PROPERTY FROM A PARISIAN PRIVATE COLLECTOR
(lots 101 – 133)
Selected and assembled over a twenty-year period, the collection that follows includes short, limited editions, alongside unique and bespoke works. Swift and sure to recognise the emergence of a new sensitivity in contemporary design, the pieces were individually secured for the home of the Parisian collector, uniting a new generation of French creators who sought not to look towards technology and conceptualism, but who preferred to investigate themes of nature, fantasy and legend - to alchemic effect. In so doing, the exponents of this diverse yet inquisitive new movement reflected a reawakening of the themes that had guided Art Nouveau a century before, albeit one that was now invested with allegory and the surreal.
Almost all of the works here presented summon nature as inspiration – insect-like forms, coral, trees or simply branches, lily-pads and seaweed, now static in bronze to invoke the imagination of Jules Verne, the botanic textures of Emile Gallé, or the muscular permanence of Hector Guimard’s Métro. From the polished calamander cabinet’s surface (lot 118), softened bronze thorns emerge, offering living presence to the apparently static, in concert with the root-like tendrils that probe inquisitively from a convex mirror (lot 101). Elsewhere, a rabbit (lot 106) beguiles the spectator towards Lewis Carroll’s subterranean wonderland, as crab-like stools observe, anchored by inertia.
If nature, through Art Nouveau, is to provide one point of vantage then the mythologies of the Antique, as diffused through the Surrealist eyes that inspired a new generation of designer-decorators in the 1930s, Jean-Michel Frank, Eugène Printz and Marc Du Plantier included, provide further. Graeco-Roman bronze chairs (lot 110) and laurel-wreath bowls, an altar-like console of ceremonial ebonised elegance (lot 111), paused static by the Minotaur immovable atop his serpentine gilded labyrinth (lot 119). As panorama and as detail, the myriad trails of this collection reveal it as cinematic in scope, the spectator as Jean Cocteau’s Orpheus, between one dreamlike world and another.
(lots 101 – 133)
Selected and assembled over a twenty-year period, the collection that follows includes short, limited editions, alongside unique and bespoke works. Swift and sure to recognise the emergence of a new sensitivity in contemporary design, the pieces were individually secured for the home of the Parisian collector, uniting a new generation of French creators who sought not to look towards technology and conceptualism, but who preferred to investigate themes of nature, fantasy and legend - to alchemic effect. In so doing, the exponents of this diverse yet inquisitive new movement reflected a reawakening of the themes that had guided Art Nouveau a century before, albeit one that was now invested with allegory and the surreal.
Almost all of the works here presented summon nature as inspiration – insect-like forms, coral, trees or simply branches, lily-pads and seaweed, now static in bronze to invoke the imagination of Jules Verne, the botanic textures of Emile Gallé, or the muscular permanence of Hector Guimard’s Métro. From the polished calamander cabinet’s surface (lot 118), softened bronze thorns emerge, offering living presence to the apparently static, in concert with the root-like tendrils that probe inquisitively from a convex mirror (lot 101). Elsewhere, a rabbit (lot 106) beguiles the spectator towards Lewis Carroll’s subterranean wonderland, as crab-like stools observe, anchored by inertia.
If nature, through Art Nouveau, is to provide one point of vantage then the mythologies of the Antique, as diffused through the Surrealist eyes that inspired a new generation of designer-decorators in the 1930s, Jean-Michel Frank, Eugène Printz and Marc Du Plantier included, provide further. Graeco-Roman bronze chairs (lot 110) and laurel-wreath bowls, an altar-like console of ceremonial ebonised elegance (lot 111), paused static by the Minotaur immovable atop his serpentine gilded labyrinth (lot 119). As panorama and as detail, the myriad trails of this collection reveal it as cinematic in scope, the spectator as Jean Cocteau’s Orpheus, between one dreamlike world and another.
HERVÉ VAN DER STRAETEN (B. 1965)
'Etoile', a unique large mirror, 2003
Closed16 October 2019
Price Realised
GBP 106,250
More Information
Specialist note
A graduate of the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Paris, van der Straeten practised originally as a jewellery designer before embracing furniture and lighting design. International clients have included Dior and Guerlain, and his works have been purchased by Mobilier National, and the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris. In 2007 van der Straeten’s workshop was identified as a ‘Living Heritage Business’ by France’s Ministry of Culture, and in 2008 the designer was named as Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres.
Christie's would like to thank Olivia Palazzolo from Atelier Hervé van der Straeten for her assistance with the cataloguing of this lot.