Safra Sell-Off, or: the Million-Dollar Cigarette Box
Sotheby’s
Faberge gold, gilded silver and translucent desk clock
estimate: $200,000–$300,000
realized: $1.2 million
It’s proven time and time again: single-owner sales with name recognition or connoisseurship status bring a premium on the auction block. The Lily and Edmond J. Safra collection, sold at Sotheby’s last week, was no exception. For those collectors who missed out on grabbing a piece of haute Europe from the massive Royal House of Hanover purge last month, the Safra sale was yet another chance.
Quality was high. Buyers bid fiercely. Many shekels were spent.
Safra, as you may remember, was the billionaire banker who met a fiery death in his Monaco penthouse a few years back, quite likely from foul play. He and his wife Lily had lavishly decorated their many residences–in London, Geneva, Paris and New York–in high-style French, Continental, English and Anglo-Indian furniture, accented with important and exquisite objets, many of them Russian, including beaucoups de fab Faberge.
The grand total for this high-end house sale? Nearly $49 million–the highest-selling dec arts sale in New York, ever. Top lot was the Louis XVI ebony bureau plat, attributed to cabinetmaker-to-the-king Joseph Baumhauer. It sold for $4.7 million against a $5-7 million estimate. A 16th-century Safavid animal and tree carpet inspired a lengthy three-way bidding war, finally hammering down at $2.03 million, nearly triple its high estimate of $700,000. And a rare 18th-century Anglo-Indian teak and ebony bureau cabinet fetched $1.47 million, above a high estimate of $800,000.
The Russian and Faberge session spawned particularly fierce competition, totaling $12.9 million, double the high estimate of $6.4 million. No surprise there, since the Russians are running around with wheelbarrows of cash these days, scooping up anything from their cultural heritage that’s not nailed down. Four bidders chased the rare Faberge gold, gilded silver and translucent desk clock (pictured here). Estimated at $200,000–$300,000, it soared to $1.248 million. A Faberge cigarette box, bearing the racing colors of Leopold de Rothschild, brought $1. 02 million. I wonder if the new owner even smokes.
November 8th, 2005 18:03
Are these Russians with wheelbarrows replete with rubles really concerned, by procuring these items, with preserving their history or do they just smell the smoke of the western art world heating up?