Exquisite Georges Geffroy Small Gueridon

This elegant vase of attenuated proportions was given an unusual silver-luster glaze, and embellished with two medallions on a military theme. One depicts a young soldier with a swor...

This photograph by George Platt Lynes is unusual for having three exposures of the Russian princess Natalie Paley, the celebrated beauty, and the wife...

Great grandson of the famous writer Victor Hugo, the painter Jean Hugo (1894-1984) was in the thick of the Paris art scene between the wars. A member of the avant garde, he was a friend of Picasso, Cocteau and Colette and was associated with the Neo Romantics. His small gouaches on paper were avidly collected by Dr. Albert Barnes, and can be seen today in the Barnes Collection in Philadelphia. Hugo's most desirable work -- landscapes, interior scenes, set designs -- date from the mid 1920s to the late 1930s. This whimsical painting, signed and dated 1927, is set in a curtained, classical interior furnished with Victorian lighting fixtures...

This trompe l'oeil drawing depicts the artist's tools -- a black and a red crayon, and a folding steel ruler that was painted with silver pigments, which have blackened with age. They're shown on a sheaf of papers that include a medieval manuscript page, a musical score, and a group of prints. The unifying theme is the artistic patronage of the Medici, the Grand Dukes of Tuscany, who intermarried with the Habsburgs, who were the Holy Roman Emperors. Among the papers are prints by Stefano Della Bella, the Florentine artist who worked for the Medici. They depict a negro page with a horse, and portraits of Lorenzo Lippi...

This 1930s Italian bench is so over-scaled, and monumental in appearance, that it seems to have been made for the large room it was destined, rather than the comfort of a typical sitter. As such, it would function equally well as a low side table or a high cocktail table. We’ll allow the buyer to determine its use. The designer was Pierluigi Colli, and the fabricator Martinotti, the Turin furniture and interior decorating firm that was established in 1831, and exhibited at the 1876 Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition and the 1904 St Louis World’s Fair. Colli’s family owned a textile company that supplied Martinotti with upholstery fabrics, suggesting nepotism had something to do with his being hired as the firm's director in 1926. Nevertheless, he proved himself worthy as a designer and a businessman. Having studied in Paris at the Ecole des Arts Decoratifs, he befriended leading French designers, and arranged for Martinotti to retail Lalique glass and Jean Perzel lighting. In addition, the quality of their work, and Colli’s dedication to the modern design movement, prompted Carlo Mollino, Gio Ponti, and Gino Levi-Montalcini, among others, to have Martinotti fabricate some of their furniture. Colli’s claim to fame, however, is his own work as a designer, and his ability to master the vocabularies of every trend from Art Deco to midcentury modern. During the Great Depression, when nearly every nation floundered economically, fascist Italy...

Our table was made of birch, solid and veneered, stained a rich brown, and topped off with a slab of Bohemian breccia marble. We date it to around 1928, and attribute the design to Fritz August Breuhaus de Groot, who coined the term Kultivierte Sachlichkeit (Cultured Objectivity) to describe his work, and distinguish it from the Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity) practiced by his contemporaries Walter Gropius, Mies van der Rohe, and Lily Reich. The table bears a passing resemblance to a considerably simplified, marble-topped ovoid one that he designed for his 1934 Berlin living room. Breuhaus was a man on the make. The first of his three marriages was to the daughter of an industrialist, who financed the building of luxury villas and workers’ housing designed by his son-in-law. In 1929, Breuhaus, the son of a dentist, added “de Groot” to his name, falsely linking himself to a distinguished family of painters. By then, he’d been fudging his academic record for years. That didn’t prevent a teaching appointment at the State University of Bavaria, which allowed him to add the prestigious “Herr Professor” prefix to his name. Yet he never followed through on the teaching — he was far too busy designing more luxury villas (commissions he accepted only if he could furnish them as well), and products for his own company, which included furniture, textiles, wallpapers, lighting, and fine silver. In addition to designing aircraft interiors for Lufthansa, and pullman railroad...

A rare egyptian influenced Regency Period candlestand or gueridon. Great thebes style legs and neoclassical motif.

A tall gueridon with a green/ grey mottled marble top, with gilt-bronze mounts of flower heads with stylized foliage, on four tapering legs with a middle stretcher, terminating in li...

Rare important Somno from the Empire period entirely in Mahogany veneer from Cuba and featuring a gray marble It is unusual to find a somno of this size since it is larger than the ...

Candlestand with circular top, turned pedestal, three turned legs and ball feet. Black paint is not original.

Coffee table 1960 by Georges Geffroy Composed of a satin black lacquered metal base with a square section formed by four flared legs resting on the fl...

Very finely cast Empire style gilt bronze gueridon table with swan motif.