Important 20th Century Design and Tiffany Sale 17 December 2009 in New York A Collection of Twelve American Modernist Microphones, ca. 1925-1946, est. $25/35,000
with maritime history and was featured in the Normandie Grand Salon. Each mosaic assembled from dozens of glass panels anchored by bronze brackets at their corners, a composite of which was, in a sense, the mural’s salvation allowing the works to be removed piecemeal from Normandie before her fatal fire in February 1942. The ten lots included in the sale enjoy the irreplaceable advantage of pictorial contiguity originating from the mural’s topmost level with mast, riggings, bellying sails and fluttering pennants of a seventeenth-century warship juxtaposed against a lowering Breton sky. A second session of designs by Tiffany Studios will be offered at approximately 3:30pm which will include lamps, a window, glass, a painting, small metal works and ephemera. Among the highlights is “Oriental Poppy” Floor Lamp (lot 427, est. $500/800,000) a “Laburnum” Table Lamp (lot 434, est. $350/500,000), and a “Salamander” Table Lamp (lot 428, est. $300/500,000).
Considered one of the studios masterworks, A Unique “Pebble” Window (lot 423, est. $250/350,000) will also be offered. The window presumably served Tiffany Studios through the years as a prototype that was neither sold nor duplicated; its function showed potential clients the infinite aesthetic reach of the studios inter-disciplinary skills.
