Results: Christie's Chateau de Gourdon Sale

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A few days ago I posted on an upcoming sale at Christie's, Paris from the collection of Laurent Negro of items from his Chateau de Gourdon collection. The sale had hopes of breaking the modern sales mark set by the YSL offerings in Feb 2009.

The sale totaled $60 million including buyers premium, and came in just above the pre sale low estimate of of $56.5 million, the pre sale high estimate was close to $84.7 million.  If you subtract out the buyers premium, the pre sale low estimate was not met.  The sale saw a buy through rate of about 84% for the 860 lots.  If you recall the YSL, very few lots went unsold.

Bloomberg reports on the sale

Works by other 20th-century designers met with a patchier response. A unique Art Deco games table created by Jean Dunand in 1930 for the couturier Madeleine Vionnet, estimated at 3 million euros to 5 million euros, failed to sell, as did Gray’s late 1920s canvas and black lacquer “Transat” chair, valued at 600,000 euros to 800,000 euros.

“There are plenty of buyers for luxury furniture,” said Berg. “Modernist icons aren’t so easy to house.”

A 1920s black lacquer “Brick” screen was the most successful of the Gray lots. Originally owned by the Irish-born designer herself, it sold to a European collector for 1.4 million euros, just below the high estimate.

A 1929 modernist carpet by Francis Bacon -- who worked as a designer before devoting himself to painting -- sold for 109,000 euros against a valuation of 20,000 euros to 30,000 euros.
Art Deco

Negro lost money on a number of pieces. He paid $386,500 for Jan and Joel Martel’s 1931 aluminum Art Deco sculpture of an express train, “Locomotive en marche,” at Sotheby’s (BID), New York, in 2008. It sold for a hammer price of 200,000 euros. A 1927 Gustave Miklos bronze sculpture, “Jeune Fille,” fetched 1.15 million euros without fees. This had been bought at a French auction in June 2005 for 1.6 million euros.

The purchase price of the design collection had been higher than the low estimate, Jonathan Rendell, Christie’s New York- based deputy chairman, said in an interview before the event.

“Considering that the collection was barely 10 years old, the sale did well,” the London-based consultant Christopher Payne said in an interview. “This is still a young market and the provenance didn’t have as much pull as Saint Laurent.”

To read the Bloomberg report on the sale, click HERE.