Large Art Nouveau Collection Bought For Auction

The Antiques Trade Gazette is reporting that San Franciso area auction house, Michaan's has purchased a large collection of Art Nouveau decorative art pieces and plans to auction them on November 17.  There will be over 380 lost of Tiffany pieces. Michaan's representatives claim it is the largest single private purchase of decorative arts.

The ATG reports on the purcahse and sale

When Mr Horiuchi decided to sell the collection as a whole, Mr Duncan notified his long time friend Allen Michaan, proprietor of the mid-size West Coast auctioneers Michaan's. Aware that bigger beasts more accustomed to major transactions of this kind were circling, Mr Michaan worked quickly to assemble a group of private investors to make the deal on his own.

It was the owner's desire to sell in a single private transaction rather than go through the auction process: he chose to keep only a group of Tiffany religious windows to be mounted in a wedding chapel at Mount Fuji. Mr Michaan was able to use copies of the catalogue to impress potential investors. "So which pieces are you buying?" asked one associate as he flicked through its 640 pages. "All of it!" he replied. A contract with Mr Horiuchi was signed on March 24.

Allen Michaan would not be drawn on how much he and his investors paid for the collection, but he called the acquisition "the largest single transaction to ever occur in the world of decorative arts" and predicted it would "elevate Michaan's Auctions from a well-known, fast-growing national player on the antiques and art scene to an entirely new international level".

There are a total of 380 pieces of Tiffany in the collection that will be sold in a number of ways.

The global estimate for the November sale alone - numbering 150 lots of Tiffany including lamps, windows (including two by Frank Lloyd Wright), vases, paintings, enamels and mosaics - stands at $14m-18m.

Other pieces will be offered privately (some have already sold) while Mr Michaan, himself a Tiffany collector of 30 years, hopes to keep the Garden Museum collection of 38 pieces of L.C. Tiffany jewellery together with a single sale to an institution.

He has, however, taken the decision to consign the substantial holdings of French Art Nouveau for sale at Sotheby's Paris where, he believes, it will find its best market.

Important pieces of Gallé furniture - some of which will be coming to the open market for the first time - as well as numerous objects by Réné Lalique, Louis Majorelle and their contemporaries are currently in transit. A showpiece sale is planned for February.

Source: Antiques Trade Gazette