A major Art Deco collection at the heart of the Design sale

Paris – Christie’s Paris presents its Spring Design Sale, which this season stands out as one of the highlights of the international market for 20th- and 21st-century decorative arts. Driven by particularly strong momentum : €14.5M in spring 2025, followed in November by a sale that doubled its estimate on the occasion of the centenary of Art Deco, paying tribute to a century of creation since its emergence, the category confirms Paris’s growing appeal as a venue for major events in historic design. Bringing together approximately 260 lots, the sale will exceptionally take place over two days, on 26 and 27 May.

In the wake of the major exhibition devoted to Art Deco at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, the sale will open with a remarkable ensemble of approximately fifty works from the collection of Hélène and Gérard Doux. Assembled over time through Parisian galleries and auction rooms, this coherent and exacting collection unfolds, within the setting of a Parisian apartment, a particularly sensitive vision of the elegance and modernity of the interwar period.

Several major works by Émile‑Jacques Ruhlmann rank among the most highly anticipated pieces, including an important Vautheret chandelier (€300,000–500,000). The ensemble also features rare folding screens by Jean Dunand (€40,000–60,000), a carpet by Armand‑Albert Rateau circa 1926 (€100,000–150,000), as well as a dining table by Ruhlmann dated 1933 (€100,000–150,000), bearing witness to a particularly exacting eye devoted to the decorative elegance of the interwar period.

The sale will also offer a significant overview of 20th-century art, ranging from modernist experiments to post-war sculptural forms, bringing together a number of works with prestigious, and in some cases historic, provenance, which further enhances their significance. Among them is Alberto Giacometti’s Tête de femme floor lamp, formerly in the collection of Pierre and Patricia Kane Matisse, as well as a set of works by René Herbst created for the Aga Khan III, bearing witness to the dialogue between decorative modernity and the great international commissions of the inter‑war period. The ensemble also includes a rare “Persan” daybed by Eileen Gray (€400,000–600,000), a pair of Ours polaire armchairs by Jean Royère (€500,000–600,000), as well as a rare bronze and leather sofa by Jean‑Michel Frank (€400,000–600,000), illustrating the richness and diversity of the decorative explorations of the period.

A month after the spectacular sale of Claude Lalanne’s Pomme de New York during Marquee Week 20/21 in Paris, a Pomme de Ben by François-Xavier Lalanne is set to be one of the highlights of the sale (€3,000,000–5,000,000). It will feature alongside several works by the Lalanne couple, including a Petit Lapin à collerette by Claude Lalanne (€100,000–200,000), confirming the now central place of their work in the history of a unique sculptural design movement of the second half of the 20th century.

Finally, the sale will feature a significant selection of Italian glassware from the collection Themes & Variations: The Murano Glass Collection of Liliane Fawcett, comprising nearly eighty Murano vases by artists including Fulvio Bianconi, Flavio Poli, Dino Martens and Maurice Marinot. Amongst this collection, the Merletto vase, designed in 1953 by Fulvio Bianconi (€40,000–50,000), stands out as one of the most accomplished and iconic examples of the technical and poetic virtuosity of post-war Murano glassware.

Highlights of the sale

About the sale                          Live auction on 26 and 27 May
                                                   Exhibition from 21 to 26 May