Novità

Auction No. 087: Highlights of Design History VI 'Table Culture' - 01.12.2009

Auction No.087, 01 December 2009
Highlights of Design History VI 'Table Culture'

Public viewing:
26 and 27 November, 10 a.m. - 6 p.m.
28 and 29 November, 1 p.m. - 5 p.m.
30 November, 10 a.m. - 6 p.m.
01 December, 10 a.m. - 1 p.m.

 

Pre Auction Report

Are you looking for the icing on the cake for your dining room furnishing? Then you will absolutely find it in the table culture sale.

Be it exquisite flatware sets by renowned designers or classical table services from the Art Nouveau, the Bauhaus era or the Art Déco right up to chairs from Flower Power times – Quittenbaum will offer everything around classy dining and savouring on 1 December.

The auction will start with five items from Biedermeier times, an era when the prospering bourgeoisie felt comfortable at being at home.

Two richly adorned fish servers, naturally from Northern Germany, where one ate fish very often, illustrate how in this epoch people cared about minute details (€ 330 each). Very rare indeed such an elegant four-piece dining chair set from Northern Italy with open backrests and gracefully ebonised surfaces, offered moderately for € 4,800.

Cold and hot punch are classic beverages that can be readily drunk in the summer time and in the pre-Christmas season alike – you would be prepared perfectly for it with this set for ten by Theresienthal with its opulent floral enamel decoration (€ 1,400). Even the simplest fish dishes become a feast for the eyes when served on the porcelain service for six persons by Herman Gradl and made by Nymphenburg (€ 13,000).

Collectors of unusual flatware will delight in the rarities by well-known designers from the Art Nouveau era. Henry van de Velde, Joseph Maria Olbrich, Emil Lettré, Josef Hoffmann and Peter Behrens lead the choice. But there are also cutlery sets for every-day use, either for six or for twelve persons: For instance, Richard Riemerschmid’s flatware for Carl Weishaupt, designed in 1908 (Fish cutlery for 12 persons, € 2,600; dining cutlery of 84 pieces for € 2,000); or Georg Jensen’s ‚Acanthus’ flatware with 112 pieces for € 6,000.

Who ever loves exquisite Art Déco furniture and wants to remodel his or her dining room, can bid on a dining table, a credenza, a cabinet and ten chairs of Lyon-based master André Sornay. The ensemble will be called up for a moderate € 10,000.

Highly topical: the lounge. Here some classics of the 1950s are being celebrated. Charles Eames’ ‚Lounge chair is being offered in an early version with black leather for € 4,000. The two matching side tables can be had for € 1,800 respectively € 2,300,--. An alternative provides Isamu Noguchi’s ‚IN 40’ glass table that he had designed as early as 1944 (€ 2,500) with a matching child’s chair (€ 4,000).

The pieces of furniture with ‚trompe-l’oeil’ painting by Milanese Piero Fornasetti draw attention not only in puristic environments. Quittenbaum has a ‚strumenti musicali’ sofatable (€ 4,000) and a very rare ‚Acrobati’ screen for € 7,000.

If you want a bar in your living room, choose between Aldo Tura’s bar cabinet covered in green kid leather and with integrated refrigerator (€ 3,500), a luminous red cabinet by Cees Braakman (€ 2,500), a typical post-modern Memphis-bar by Alessandro Mendini (€ 5,000) and a charming Italian bar with inscribed Cocktail recipes and a gaudy-coloured cock (€ 2,400).

Who thinks, Bauhaus is not prosaic enough, can purchase an aluminium dining table ‚88’ by Maarten van Severen, designed in 1988 and receive a classic-to-be.