66 12th March 2011 international events
Rare pigeon model the highlight of novelty camera offering in Cologne
ONE of the many rarities in the forthcoming Photographica & Film sale at Auction Team Breker in Cologne on March 26 will be a pigeon camera, manufactured in about 1937 by Christian Adrian Michel in Walde, Switzerland. The camera was patented by Michel,
a member of a watch-making family, in 1936. The whole apparatus weighs only 70 grams and was strapped to the chest of a homing pigeon. A double clockwork mechanism drove
the shutter-release and the film wind-on and was also able to change the angle of the lens. A timer enabled a delay of up to 70 minutes before the first of six panoramic negatives on 16mm film was exposed. The rest followed at 30-second intervals. In spite of the high serial number, 995,
only around ten of this type of camera were ever made, as Michel’s idea failed to capture the imagination of his potential customers. Over the last decade, three cameras,
two type A and one type B, have been sold at Christie’s for between £7170 and £14,400 including premium. The Cologne camera, a type B, makes it four. It is estimated at €15,000-20,000 when it comes up for sale later this month. Another interesting aspect of the sale
is a group of ten rare spy and disguised cameras from the turn of the century. Among them is a photo-cravat made in about 1890 by Edmund and Leon
Printz provides an early taste of this year’s strong show of Art Deco
THE big test of the market for decorative art and design comes later this month when Christie’s sell the collections from the Château de Gourdon near Grasse, a private property stuffed with top-flight pieces from the Art Nouveau to the Modernist period. Meanwhile, early evidence of the
strength of the top end of the Deco and interwar market in Paris came on February 9 when Beaussant Lefevre (20% buyer’s premium) offered 11 lots by Eugene Printz (1889-1948). Six of these came from one ensemble
created for a salon or dining room, comprising two cabinets, two bureaux plats, a pair of armchairs and three side chairs. The other five comprised the
furnishings for a girl’s bedroom with a bed, a chest of drawers, a small table and an amchair in walnut and a cabinet in violetwood veneer, that had been acquired in 1938.
The entire group realised €498,600
(£453,272) but most of this was provided by two cabinet pieces from the first ensemble. Topping the bill at €165,000 (£150,000) was a 7ft 5in (2.27m) wide, four-door side cabinet in Printz’s trademark palmwood veneer on oak, set on steel cross bow supports, bearing the designer’s stamp to the bottom right. It was followed at €135,000
(£122,730) by a piece that was a collaboration between Printz and that master of Art Deco metalware, Jean Dunand: a 5ft 8in (1.7m) wide violetwood on oak-veneered cabinet with six doors to the front, covered in oxidised metallic plaques decorated with a panoramic scene of ibex and plants. The cabinet is stamped by Printz to the wood and Dunand to the metalware. The other pieces ranged from €50,000
(£45,455) for the walnut chest of three long drawers from the bedroom set, down to just €1300 (£1180) for its bed.
Below: the talents of both Eugène Printz and Jean Dunand are on show in this collaboration between the two in a cabinet sold by Beaussant Lefèvre last month for €135,000 (£122,730).
Bloch in Paris and incorporating a flat metal box camera for six glass plates (estimate €13,000-18,000). Also from Bloch is “Le Sherlock
Holmes” with a camera hidden in a book- like leather folder (estimate €10,000- 15,000). Another detective camera in book form was made by Haake and Albers in Frankfurt in 1892 and is offered for €4000-6000. From about the same period is a
leather binocular case with hidden mechanism, manufactured by Frank
Valéry Frères in Paris, who were more renowned for making hearing aids (estimate €10,000-15,000). Two hidden hat cameras are also
in the sale. One of only two known examples made by M.J. de Neck in Antwerp in 1885, designed for concealment in a bowler hat, is estimated at €14,000-20,000, and what appears to be the unique prototype of a German top-hat camera, complete with original hat box, from about 1896 is up for sale at €5000-8000.
Jonathan Franks
Left: the rare pigeon camera to be offered by Auction Team Breker on March 26. Below: a prototype top-hat camera with original hat box to be sold by Auction Team Breker on March 26.
A sure sign of Spring
STAR of the Design sale on February 15 at Munich auctioneers Quittenbaum (19.5 per cent buyer’s premium) was this 13in (34cm) high Primavera vase, executed in 1929/30 by Vetreria Artistica Barovier & C. in Murano. The double-handled vase was made of slightly milky and bubbly glass with a light craquelé, a décor which seems to have been the chance result of experiments by Ercole Barovier in the late 1920s. The pieces were first presented at the Venice Biennale in 1930, to much critical acclaim. This particular vase has been in the possession of a Swedish collector since then. For some reason Barovier decided not to continue with the production of the Primavera pieces, which explains their scarcity. The vase was in the catalogue at a fairly substantial €60,000-70,000 and after a short tussle between bidders from several countries, it was knocked down to a European private collector for €94,000 (£85,455).
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