"'There are still a lot of extremely wealthy people out there." - obviously, since someone would pay $28 million for a leather armchair. The sale was about $25 million higher than the Christie's estimate and set a record for a work of 20th-century design at auction. These words are of Edward Dolman, Christie's managing director.
It was bought by Cheska Vallois, owner of the Paris gallery Vallois, which had originally sold the chair to Saint Laurent. Created in 1917, or slightly later, by Eileen Gray, an Irish architect and furniture designer, for her first commission as an interior decorator. With lacquered wooden armrests shaped like braided serpents, it shows her in transition from art nouveau to art deco.
I like her designs, but still this is unbelievable! "She's always been a darling of design curators and collectors because she was a woman competing in a men's world, and because as a one-of-a kind object it would be perceived as art," explains William L. Hamilton, who previewed the auction for Art in America.
Eileen Gray continues to get her belated appreciation! And crisis appears to be quite relative!
via Fast Company
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