New Arrivals: Curiosities
Vintage, New and Antique Curiosities
Shop New Arrivals
New day. New (outstanding) designs. Be the first to shop pieces — from furniture to fine jewelry — arriving daily.
to
5
1
1
4
1
1
1
1
2
1
1
1
5
1
5
4
1
1
Hermès Pipe Holder Pulley Shackle Shaped Vintage in Silver Rare Navy Theme
By Hermès
Located in FR
Stunning and Rare Authentic Hermès Pipe-Holder
In shape of a a pulley and shackle (the shackle is fixed, not movable)
Vintage item
Answers to the silver test
Can be used as pipe-...
Category
Late 20th Century Unknown Sculptures
Chanel 2023 Black Silver Monogram 23P Fitness Jump Rope
By Chanel
Located in Jersey City, NJ
Introducing the sporty yet fashionable Chanel jump rope from Spring/Summer 2023 collection, crafted in sleek black with silver-tone metal hardware adorning the handles. Each handle i...
Category
2010s French Curiosities
Gucci 70s Woodcock Metal Decorative Bird
By Gucci
Located in West Hollywood, CA
Gucci 1970's collectible woodcock in silver tone metal. Substantial weight and magnificent artifacts, great decorative piece. Excellent condition.
Category
20th Century Italian Curiosities
Cartier Playing Cards Box
By Cartier
Located in Paris, FR
Cartier playing cards box featuring one deck plus joker, poker, bridge playing cards in Cartier red 2-doors case. The silk-lined box of cards with 18-karat gilded corners, printed wi...
Category
1970s French Boxes
Hermès Belt Ornament for skirts Mors et Filets Gold Leather Ghw Rare
By Hermès
Located in FR
Rare Authentic Hermès Ornament
This piece of leather is made to adorn the Hermès skirts and belts designed for this purpose (not included in sale)
The front is decorated with a "H"...
Category
1980s French Belts
French 18thcentury Diderot sculpture, with papers in one hand
Located in VALLADOLID, ES
An 18th-century man, possibly Diderot, with papers in one hand in another, with a walking cane, on an (ebonized) wood plinth.
Exquisite and very refined bone carving of the illustr...
Category
1790s French Curiosities
Related Items
Art Nouveau 1890 Flamenco Pericon Large Fan
Located in Bilbao, ES
Art Nouveau 1890 Flamenco Pericon Fan Open 66cm X 34cm / 25,98in x 13,38in
Ebonized wood. Black with rhinestones , ideal for cocktails and galas, for ...
Category
1880s Spanish Decorative Objects
Gloss Red Supreme /Tivoli Pal BT Audio Bluetooth Speaker
By Supreme
Located in Matthews, NC
Gloss Red Supreme®/Tivoli® Pal BT Audio Bluetooth Speaker
Additional Information:
Connectivity: Bluetooth
Model: PAL BT
Type: Portable Speaker Syste...
Category
2010s Curiosities
Sleek Pair of Italian Molded Resin Stylized Equine Clothing Hangers circa 21st
Located in University City, MO
Sleek pair of Italian molded resin stylized equine clothing hangers
The elegant pair of Italian molded resin hangers are designed with a pair
of smoot...
Category
21st Century and Contemporary Italian Decorative Objects
H 5 in W 2 in L 17 in
SUSANNA HARDAGE Mannequin with Textile Assemblage, Coins and Costume Jewellery
Located in Milano, IT
Susanna Hardage was one of the most active women in the search for a perfect emulsion between art and history. She tried in several works to place elements that aroused feeling in th...
Category
1980s Italian Sculptures
H 65.75 in D 15.75 in L 20.48 in
Enamel Silver Pillbox
Located in New York, NY
Lovely enamel maiden portrait on 800 silver round pillbox. Silver has decorative hand etching throughout. 1.5" x 3/8". Italy 1950's.
Very Good condition.
Category
1950s Italian Boxes
Hermes Belt Kit 85cm Gold and Black Reversible H 32mm Gold Tan Buckle GIFT NEW!
By Hermès
Located in New York, NY
Hermes Gold and Black Reversible H 32mm Belt Kit Silver Buckle 85cm
Brand New in Box. Store Fresh. Pristine Condition.
Perfect gift! Belt kit comes in full set with reversible black and gold belt strap, gold buckle, Hermes dust bag for belt buckle, and Hermes orange box.
Gold (tan camel color) on one side with classic black on the other side make this reversible two-color belt kit perfect for any ensemble.
This iconic Hermes color combination is always sold out of stores!
32mm model measures 1.25" in strap width.
85cm size usually fits jean size 26 to 31, depending on how high or low you wear your jeans.
Such an iconic Hermes look...
Category
21st Century and Contemporary French Belts
Piel Frères Art Deco c.1920 Vintage Paste Floral Design Buckle
By Piel Frères
Located in Skelmersdale, GB
This pretty and shimmering buckle by the renowned Piel Frères company dates from c.1920.
Condition Report:
Very Good - A little darkening to a couple of the paste stones. This is c...
Category
1920s French Belts
Couture MartinMargiela 1998 WorkOnPaper & Artisanal Line0 WhiteLingerie BoxedSet
By Martin Margiella, Maison Martin Margiela
Located in Chicago, IL
As conceptual art while he transitioned to Hermes Creative Director in 1998, Belgian Martin Margiela--whose creations today debut in the setting of a contemporary-art gallery priced at upwards of EU$150,000--created this stenciled or block print. Conceived by arguably the most culturally influential contemporary fashion designer since Gabriel "Coco" Chanel, it is part of a limited-edition-of-two white-boxed set that includes the couture Maison Martin Margiela "Artisanal Line 0" body-harness lingerie in its maker's signature color white for Spring 1998.
The same lingerie--one white and the other black--starred in a film made by Margiela among the five that he screened to present his Spring/Summer 1998 "Flat Collection" in Paris at the Conciergerie. In that film titled "4", which begins with a view of the iconic topless tabi "boots", the hands of Margiela's white-labcoat-clad assistants enter the frame to manipulate different garments on a model who initially wears the exterior lingerie (see our photos) as if jewelry. A simple dark collared coat, a white collared button-down shirt, and a dark button-down cardigan--all with the "displaced neckline" or "displaced shoulder" of the flat-hanging clothes--are transformed into new collarless plunging v-neck garments, which appear to be ruched when folded under the harness of the lingerie.
Both black versions of the lingerie are in museum collections. In Martin Margiela's home-country, the ModeMuseum (MoMu) archived its collected piece as OBJ7660. In the 2018 Parisian retrospective exhibition at Musee de la Mode/Palais Galleria when its artistic director was Martin Margiela (working with Curator Alexandre Samson), the second black lingerie was featured on a mannequin and collected the same year by the Vogue Paris Foundation. Other conceptual designs from this same 1998 collection of jewelry were acquired by TheMet museum in Manhattan.
Without the restriction of the use and function of clothing, the small uncreased print--on a card that can be removed from the interior-box bottom that it loosely spans--shows the buyer how to endlessly fashion unique tops using the structural-elastic lingerie as an undergarment for their own pre-worn button-down shirts.
This is a more obvious example of the once avant-garde concept of anti-fashion upcycling that Martin Margiela introduced to challenge social and fashion-industry norms by the 1990s, which echos the revolutionary anti-art of Marcel Duchamp. Essentially, valuable art/fashion can be made from everyday vintage objects. While Duchamp did so in 1917 with a men's porcelain urinal titled "Fountain" attached to a gallery exhibition wall, they both made the point that it is the way that such items are reassembled that can make the result a progressive statement.
What makes the print so special and worthy of framing for display is that, without words, the three numbered images on a single white card encapsulate the before-its-time fashion manifesto of Martin Margiela to recycle fashion in remarkable new wearable ways, such as harnessed by his unique lingerie. According to The New York Times in its 2021 feature-story that reflected on his radical fashion design and delved into his crossover art, Margiela "changed how we dressed in the 1990s", while his art embodies "the visionary man he has always been."
At a turning-point shortly after Margiela designed this couture set in 1997, his personal manifesto became more difficult to accomplish in his fashion career as the new leader of France's historic luxury fashion-house Hermes, for which his first womenswear collection was presented for Autumn/Winter 1998. Frustrated by the limitations of the industrialized luxury trade and conglomerate conflicts with his closely guarded privacy, the famously "invisible" designer pre-maturely retired from the fashion industry in 2009 to independently build on his clever artistry in other mediums. Margiela continues to demonstrate what he often told his fashion teams: "The less you have, the more creative you are as a designer."
This minimal finely-crafted lingerie without size or gender restriction--composed of adjustable "polya-elasthanne" straps with a clear anti-slip strip on the underside and three silver-plated metal double-rings--can be worn either as a concealed structural undergarment or as a visible jewelry-like body harness in appreciation of its meaning as a foundation for recycling fashion, pure form, and meaningful color. While the initial Maison Martin Margiela ready-to-wear brand tag until the late 1990s was a distinct corner-sewn unbranded white label accompanied by tags for origin and materials/care, the couture version for this lingerie is a single tiny white unbranded tag stitched in a line near the end of the waist strap, noting in English, "Made In France," with succinct material/care identification.
The set's original white unbranded box and its white black-typed couture-identification sticker complete the "invisible-brand" aesthetic. We interpret the black-type codes on the aged box-sticker (“E98 ST HAUT; Struct Elas Blanc; 02; TU"): Spring 1998 Haute Couture; white structural-elastic garment; Artisanal Line 0 edition of two; one size only.
The print, lingerie and box are in very good condition as shown in the photos with only one mark on the rear edge of the exterior box-lid. Although initially tried on by the sole owner to realize a restructured shirt, the lingerie body-harness was never worn. It was collected in Belgium at the Brussels boutique where Martin Margiela initially sold his brand with his founding business-partner Jenny Meirens since 1988.
Prior, Margiela worked for several years as a fashion-design assistant to Parisian Jean Paul Gaultier. Both designers have since received independent museum retrospectives internationally--from Paris' Grand Palais and Musee Palais Galliera (The City of Paris Fashion Museum) to NYC's The Brooklyn Museum and Antwerp's MoMu. While others continue to try, Martin Margiela (b.1957) is the only leading fashion designer to have made a full-time transition to the commercial contemporary-art world with such highly valued works.
As a rare revealing piece of both fashion and art history, the increasing value of this Maison Martin Margiela 1997...
Category
1990s French Sculptures
Size: TU one size only
Rare Surrealist Schiaparelli Figural Cat Lingerie Bag
By Elsa Schiaparelli
Located in New York, NY
Rare and unusual figural Surrealist Elsa Schiaparelli lingerie bag. This amusing, rare Schiaparelli figural cat lingerie bag is made of bright pink acetate, with "Shocking" Pink ribbon accents and long pink raffia fringe. With a white plush snout and hand cut felt eyes eyebrows and mouth. Excellent Condition. Signed, Zipper Entry on back. Length 18" x Wide 9". 1950's.
Schiaparelli, "I gave to pink, the nerve of the red, a neon pink, an unreal pink, Shocking Pink".
Yves Saint Laurent:
Schiaparelli's pink was "an aggressive, brawling, warrior pink”
Elsa Schiaparelli's "Shocking" Pink was a color which derived from a 17.27 carat rose colored Cartier diamond known as the Tete de Belier, belonging to her friend and client, Daisy Fellowes.
Shocking Pink was used for the eponymous perfume "Shocking", which was launched in 1937. The packaging was designed by artist Leonor Fini and the bottle was based on Mae West's curvaceous figure.
Her first shoe-hat, designed for her autumn 1937 collection, had a Shocking Pink heel. Salvador Dali loved...
Category
1950s French Curiosities
Hermès Playing Cards Box Card Game Case in Lacquered Elm Burl Wood
By Hermès
Located in FR
Please note: cards seen on photo are for display purpose only. Not included in the sale
Exceptional Authentic Hermès Playing Cards Case
Rare item,...
Category
20th Century French Boxes
Exceptional Hermès Pill Box Tennis Racquet Shaped Rare
By Hermès
Located in FR
Rare and Collectible Authentic Hermès Pill Box
Tennis Racquet Shaped
Vintage item
Made of metal, answers to the silver test
The lid is made of transparent plastic on which are dr...
Category
20th Century Unknown Boxes
Victorian Sterling Silver Mother of Pearl Baby Rattle
Located in Greenport, NY
Victorian Sterling Silver Mother of Pearl Baby Rattle
Length: 6"
Category