PREVIEW Christie's Park Ave. Sale, Antique French Furniture, Asian Art April 17th

[Music] a well here we are it is Monday April 1st 2024 and uh this is the video I was talking about doing a couple of weeks ago I mentioned there was a sale coming up at christe's that uh that somebody at Christies had mentioned to me because it had some really great Chinese things in it and I want to go through those but I also want to talk about the auction itself because it's when you when you look at Antiques and objects in in the in sort of the broader window so to speak of human human existence um you're going to find some interesting similarities behind what was going on in the Arts in France and in Europe at the time and what was going on at China at the same basic time it was it's a very sort of interesting uh way to look at it and it's a way to appreciate how much the world was changing at that time we often think of China as being in a capsule and dealing with the west of the trade and we often think of the French and doing their business but we don't often see the parallels the cultural parallels that were going on during the the 18th century in particular in other periods but the 18 18 century is the focus of this and it's called The Park Avenue collection and what's in this sale is is predominantly furniture and Furnishings dating to the period of Louis the 15th and Louis the 16th now Louis the 15th was the great-grandson of Louis the 14th and he was never supposed to be the emperor this is the sort of interesting thing about it he he was supposed to go to to to uncles and other members of the family but they all died and and throughout his life death play played a huge role in in determining um Louis the 15's U Future um his wife died he had a son that died uh disease was a huge problem back then and uh people people died suddenly um um for for you know reasons that they were unable to treat uh and and it just sort of went along but I want to talk about some of the furniture and Furnishings in here and a little bit about how the the what was going on in China um during the 17th and 18th century and how they were evolving the Ching dynasty was growing gr it was become a period of extreme economic success During the chinlung period especially Yong Chen and chinlung period where they were they were they were the country was at peace had been at peace for 70 or 80 years it was very very prosperous trade was good there was a lot of wealth being generated for the uh for the for the Imperial family and just like France there was a lot of wealth being created for the French royal family and and and their successors so they were all moving along sort of a similar timeline um um into into the future but appreciating the objects um that were being produced in each place I'm going to get into them a little bit but it's sort of it's a it's a sort of an interesting inter mingling of cultures and I think I think that's always the best way to collect by having things from different cultures and different different histories merging together um um uh to be to be viewed in that perspective of the time period from which they came all right but the first thing we're going to do is going to talk about some of the Chinese things then I'm going to get into some of the French furn and whatnot and I hope you stick around for it because it is interesting all right uh the first thing I want to talk about is this jar uh this is a really unusual jar it's a 100 boys jar has a wle mark on the bottom and it's estimated at just $7 to $9,000 which makes me wonder what's wrong with it uh because the top of it you'll notice has here are the boys they're wonderfully painted but at the top there's this sort of um trans translucent obene underglaze or overglaze I can't really tell from the pictures but I I I you need if if you're interested in this jar find out if that's original uh because if that's that's original to this this is an incredibly rare piece of porcelin um and I think the estimate is remarkably low now it may have been restored there may have been a restoration at the top of this jar and they added that color um um you know just to add add color I'm not sure but um I you you want to find out if that's that is original because it's it's certainly unusual all right and the jar is only estimated at7 to 9,000 for a mark and period one Le jar with unusual decoration it measures uh 12 12 and a/4 Ines tall uh but I would check that out I would definitely look into that find out about that upper section because if it if it is original uh this is a this is a$ 30 to $50,000 porcelain I think maybe more um and then there's this the kungi period Bombay form um Immortals uh incense burner this is a nice one and it's a well-known type but it's particularly well potted the shaping of the of the porcelain is exceptional very strong curvature on the body U beautifully glazed beautifully decorated um perfectly potted very symmetrical nice and even across the top $3 to $5,000 estimate it's 10 in in diameter it's a nice piece of porcelain and here you have an immortal opening up the uh one of the bottles in the cloud is coming out and you know the the idea is that Somewhere In This Cloud something mythical will appear sometimes it's a floating Castle other times it's descending cranes it could be any number of things being brought in so you it leaves it's left open to your imagination I guess and then over to this the kungi period uh brush pot it is marked on the bottom with a simple Buddha swastika device on the base but it's beautifully painted estimated at 20 to 30,000 and there are two kungi brush pots in this sale there's another one that's estimated it's not quite as uh quite as good as this one and it's estimated in 6 to 8,000 or something like that but this is a particularly nice one it's very strongly potted nice width to it um it measures 7 1/2 in in diameter it's it's a very nice piece of porcelain I think it'll get there I think the prices of these brush Bots lately has been quite good and then this another piece of you're going to see that there's a lot of kangi and a lot of late Ming pieces in there in in some in mid 18th century pieces and then you have this this very lovely pair of tall uh kungi period jars uh with battle scenes on them and done in fi uh this these are 22 in tall very big for these and it's a pair you don't see pairs of these too often in this style uh I think in this size I think they're really quite wonderful I think the enameling on them is very very good um all the secondary elements look great on it uh they've provided a number of photographs of it going through they don't show a picture of the bottom so I assume there's nothing really on it it's probably just a maybe has a circle but probably has nothing it's left blank because these big pieces once they get over 20 20 in they're not they generally aren't marked as a rule um they they didn't put marks on them certainly not kangi marks or anything like that and then over to this another wle chart and this is a very unusual chart it is Mark in period it is uh 14 in 14 and 1 12 inches tall um here's a picture of the Mark it's on the bottom there's a nice clear shot of the bottom of this by the way if you're a w Leaf fan you can come over and see it and uh this style of this this foot done in this way and the coloring and so forth makes me think this is probably an earlier W Le piece rather than a later when they got rather rustic and sort of crude at times um the early one Le pieces were closer to pieces that you would see coming out of the jiing period And this is a really unusual one because there's this this whole Rookery of birds which I which you don't see very often and it's just pine trees just covered with birds and with clouds in the background and all these birds and Ma magpies or whatever they are are just sending all over this bush so it's quite an active scene and it's a scene you do see I mean you know in the spring when the birds arrive if you live in a migrate migrate migratory area you'll see gaggles of birds we see them here behind the house all the time when they come through starlings we had we had a whole Army of robins that came through a few weeks ago and here you have it depicted on a Chinese porcelain and it was probably obviously taken from nature as something a phenomenon that they see there when the birds are migrating coming through and but very unusual subject matter um for a w Le jar very very unusual estimated at 20 to $30,000 seems reasonable Mark and period 14 in tall and then over to this a transitional period early con period U uh uh uh jar uh nicely done fem enamels um or wutai enamels uh the figures are beautifully detailed I don't see a lot of wear to it anywhere it looks to be in pretty good shape there's a brief hairline here at The Rim but overall it's a nice looking pot beautifully shaped beautifully formed uh measures 10 10 in in diameter so it's good size with just a $2 to $3,000 estimate on it so if you're interested in that get an get get a condition report on it I suspect it's in good condition uh because all the porcelain in the sale so far look like they're in pretty good shape with the exception of the question on that first wle uh pot I you want to find out about that and then you have over to this this uh Thai market um dwan Market period Bowl um very interesting 7 in in diameter estimated at $8 to 122,000 if you're if you're if you're a daan fan this might be something you'd want to look into the same pattern you'll also find if if some of you have seen it before remember they they this pattern first appeared really During the kungi period on blue and white pie and uh and it was it was continued on and then brought back in the daan period apparently all right and then over to this this is one of my favorite things in the sale it's not certainly the most expensive but it's an awfully awfully attractive box it is kung sheep period um uh beautifully colored though I love the coloring on this I love the the fact that they used a white background on the sides and a blue background on the top and then they sort of just you know outlined everything in blue to make the white produce the image very very clever decoration a little bit of fritting along the edge of course very common on kangi porcelain it's it's almost unavoidable at times especially when they had pieces with fairly sharp ridges on them they tended to to blister off but very nicely decorated uh beautiful piece of porcelain $6 to $8,000 it measures 6 and 3/4 in in diameter so it's almost 7 in wide that's a pretty good siiz box and I think it's a very unusual box um if you look around I don't think you're going to find other other similar examples very easily um let's see here the pro on it came from the The bloxom Collection um that was ended and closed out in 1928 and it was offered from the grber collection in 1986 that's the other thing I noticed about this sale was the vast majority of this the contents of the sale both the Chinese objects and the fit the French furniture the decorative accessories all were bought Bas more or less prior to 1999 most of it was bought seems to have been bought in the 1980s so it's been off the market for a good long time 40 50 years sounds like they're closing out an apartment or something's happening but uh somebody's going through a big life change I think is what this is because this is obviously a lifelong collection and then you have this this very unusual really usual um 18th century famil Rose Moon flask with monkeys on one side and um hold on a second there's the bottom and de spotted deer on the other side with ascending Birds uh this is a really interesting piece of porcelain and uh uh I can't think of one that I've seen quite like it actually I've seen bowls with similar decorations on it but never a Beyond who or Moon flask and it's estimated 30 to 50,000 it is not signed but it is 18 Cent Tre and it measures uh 13 and 1 12 in 13 and a/4 Ines a night so it's a good size flask it's not a you know five or 6 inch one but look at the decoration it's very striking love the monkeys love the monkeys this one's sort of timidly climbing up the other one is trying to entice the younger monkey off the branch because he's you know he's in danger all right I'm back so this wonderful Moon flask um with the monkeys on it uh very very unusual and again it may be one of those situ tion where it's atypical and people are going to look at it that that are buying and saying well I don't know what it's really worth they have unless they can find a comparable example upon which to base a price so it could be the chance to buy something incredibly interesting and rare um for you know 30 to 50,000 or maybe 20,000 you don't know you don't know but it's a great looking thing greatl looking thing and then you get into the furniture and this is the interesting part these are these are this is a Louis the 15th Oro mounted tulipwood Bureau plot and uh th this style of furniture uh became very very popular sort of during the second second period of Louis the 15th Reign because he ascended he became emperor at the age of five but he didn't become coronated um until he was uh 13 or 14 13 years old and at that point up until then he had a regent and Furniture Styles didn't change much but L Louis the 15th had very interesting taste he had lots of Mistresses as you know Madame papor and then later madame dubar and other people uh he was a busy guy and um that he he he took about it sort of interesting in the day that these pieces of furniture that were built these very ornate incredibly ornate markety and inlaid tables and bits of furniture with cast guilt bronzes were not made for big rooms these were made for intimate quarters these were made for small rooms the the Tron on the the pity Palace these these little places that he was a big fan of of having built and um he had the grand rooms the versailes and all that but he spent most of his time uh puttering around in smaller uh uh residences and um uh this is the kind of furniture that he he was inclined to like uh the Louis the 14th Furniture was much bigger case pieces not nearly as elaborate the the the furniture that was made during his grandfather's Reign and uh he became a big fan of Oru mounts very very fancy stuff and this is the some of the material that they made and all of these pieces were made in famous atellier made by in famous studios um that worked expressly for the king of France and they would they would have workshops going day and night making Furniture in his case when in he was in the process of building multiple homes multiple residences residences for his Mistresses residence for his family members and one thing and another and then custom furniture and Furnishings like this with these incredibly fine inlaid pieces and the these they had uh eist that would produce the the basic case form um that were free of nails free of glue and then they would send it off to be veneered and decorated and then at that point they would introduce glue and so forth but prior to that all of the joinery on these pieces like Chinese furniture were just pins it was just pinned in really fine cabinet making so it was it was a it was a trend here you have a thing where it was it was how they made Furniture in China and it was also how they made Furniture in France for the for the for the uh for the for the upper classes and then and this is a a beautiful piece of furniture it's estimated at40 to $60,000 by jacqu dubba it was made around 1745 sort of at the very very beginning of what's what's known as the the true Louis the 15th style uh right around that time period so it's it's it's it's one of the one of the early pieces and then there's this now this is interesting because this was designed by uh Gian condo um alberi who was a millanes cabinet maker but had heavy influence um um by the French Workman French work obviously and uh he was a very very famous designer in Italy um he he he was he got awards from Napoleon uh he was famous for paintings he had he had he was a connoisseur of the Arts and he was an amazing Furniture designer and this is one of the tables that he had designed and the interesting thing about him he lived to be almost a hundred he lived to be 96 years old which was pretty amazing in the 18th century and uh this was one of the tables that was attributed to his Workshop um uh it was done in the Giovani Goa Workshop after a designed by giocondo Albert toi and uh who was working in Milan at the time and this was made around 1800 they estimate so it was just a it was just coming on sort of at the at the beginning of the Louis the 16th period because a lot of the furniture in here is also Louis the 16th and there there's not a an enormous change or shift between L Louis the 16th Louis the 15th and Louis the 16th there's certain uh pieces that are at times very difficult to to differentiate um if you look at them quickly and then you had beautiful things like this these these ftoys um these are wonderful a f toy is just an open armchair um uh if it has a closed arm on it with fabric over it it it's called a berer and if it has an open arm it's called a ftoi that's the the only difference and these are all beautifully carved guilt wood uh uh frames with a fantastic looking 19th century French tapestries on them probably 19th century unless they're very expensive custom pieces um estimated at 20 to 30,000 for the four chairs or around you know four five $6,000 per chair uh made at again at the at sort of the early early phases of of of the true Louis the the fully matured Louis the 15 style and then you have this now this is Louis the 16th and as I said they're pretty similar in um in appearance um in in many ways lots of uh beautiful woodwork um this is a cylinder desk which means that this whole front of the the desk here is is is composed of a solid block of wood that's been steam bent and this will revolve back up into the body give revealing a a writing space and there it is it's got pull out slides on the side and here here's the interior all fitted with little drawers uh paper drawers ink drawers and so forth leaving notes not too dissimilar from what you'd want from a desk today really except that You' probably a laptop on it and they didn't have those uh but anyway it's a it's a wonderful looking cylinder desk beautifully done um at the end of the uh uh sort of it was done by they said this was done by Adam weisweiler um between 1785 and 1790 so that would have been again Louis the 16th period okay and then over to this you have this really nice um late Louis the 15th Oro mounted Kingwood tulipwood tulipwood and amaranth poetry commode and uh if you don't know what amaran is it's it's it's it's like like in China where zon wood was so popular it was a purple wood well amaran is a purple wood that the French were importing from Brazil at the time and it it was it was a color that they the market the inlaid marry people really like to work with because it gave a strong contrast and it it bloomed like like um zon into once air hit it and it was refinished it developed beautiful color this beautiful purplish tone with striations in it and and the French cabinet makers like the Chinese um um uh carers loved um amaranth and um they used it a lot and you will see the word amaranth on a lot of pieces um U that were made especially during the the the middle of the well mid 18th century onward um under Louis Louis the 15th and Louis the 16th and uh this is the chest and if you look at the amount of work that went into this thing the phenomenal inlays just phenomenal those little tiny they're like toothpicks uh extremely fine workmanship all the way around you know hand guilt bronzes and hand hand cast bronze rather and then gilded and then this beautiful pudding Stone top and uh again um if you think about in the 18th century in China During the chinlung period um what were they making in porcelain they were doing the um U the Trump ly uh porcelain emulating pudding Stone uh so pudding Stone was a popular U visual uh image uh not only in China at the time but also in France because you find it often on French furniture it was considered to be you know a very very uh luxurious type of stone and here this very nice uh chest estimated at 12 to1 18,000 and then over to this is another Oro mounted L is Louis the 16th um amaran and mounted tulib marquetry and so forth this Demi lude commode uh beautifully done with a green marble top moss green marble uh with a pictoral panel in the center all done with marquetry all done with marquetry individually cut and again you have this extremely fine um inlay uh technique that they were able to do um fantastically fussy took forever to make these and again it was it was part of a reflection of the era where like in China they were doing luxurious things in the court of U Yong Chen and Chin end end of the kangi period Yong Chen and chinlung and in France um the end of Louis the 14's Reign going into Louis the 15th Louis the 16th and again um enormous Pro enormously prosperous time lots of wealth and money was being spent on the Arts and uh he he was a a huge fan of the Arts himself a big Patron he he employed hundreds of workmen um doing everything from making Furniture to saoner carpets to to tapestries to spectacular interior architectural elements columns and so forth and if you if you've been to Paris and and seen what they what they built during this time it is quite phenomenal and certainly you know it certainly can be viewed on as being on a power with what they would do similar to what they were doing in China at the same time among the the the elite leading classes in that country um the same sort of things were going on in France human nature is human nature and they were also doing things like this this absolutely beautiful Parisian porcelain and a pair of um gold ground compano companion vases ears classical ears and and in very French style they have uh they have pictoral images of humble farmers and people working the land and so forth which was very popular subject matter and uh but beautifully made porcelain um and you have to you have to look at this and realized that the Europeans didn't come along making porcelain until just you know 100 years before before this um they were not long into the porcelain world and they were already producing exemplary pieces like this um where the Chinese have been making it since the 9th century so it's it's a very interesting thing of how quickly they caught up these were made around 1825 they're estimated at $2 to $3,000 and and and you should go through that that's you know I'm not going to I'm not going to go through every lot in the sale it's a very interesting auction um as you can see there's lots of Chinese material in here there's some wonderful portraits lots of decor of accessories things that you you you might like um and and you know they did they did amazingly great work in uh France just like they did in China um and it all comes together beautifully it all works together beautifully elegantly and uh that's all I really have to say on it's just an interesting sale I hope you check it out uh there is a downloadable PDF file here you can download the catalog onto your phone if you want to you want to carry it around and read it a little bit it's very informative and uh there's a very inter in range of um furnishings and Furniture in here uh from top to bottom no no carpets to speak of but but they have everything else so I think I think it's a great lots of paintings lots of great paintings so check it out all right so that's about it have a good rest of your week here we'll be back uh later on in the week with something else and uh see you again soon [Music] [Applause] byebye [Music] oh

Channel: Peter Combs

Views: 2,605

Keywords: antiques, antique auctions, chinese art, auction news, chinese porcelain, asian art, antique collecting, chinese antiques, french furniture, louis XV, louis xvi

Id: zwzthDTU2jA

Length: 24min 54sec (1494 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 01 2024