Product Description
Paul Laszlo Rare Art Deco Enameled Sterling Cigarette Case c.1925

PAUL LÁSZLÓ (1900-1993) Austria / USA
MARIA ROTT (enamel) Vienna, Austria
Enameled sterling cigarette case c.1925
Hand painted foil backed and colorful fired enamel scene with a figure and a flowering plant all within a red enamel border on sterling
Marks: Paul Laszlo (on inside edge, rubbed), RS in a cartouche (Vienna maker’s mark), STERLING
H: 4″ x W: 3″ x D: 3/8″
Matching enamel dresser set by Paul Laszlo illustrated: “Kunsthandwerk” Band 62, Heft 5, February 1930
Born in Budapest, the architect Paul Laszlo studied in Vienna, Paris and Berlin before setting up an office in Vienna. By 1927, Laszlo had moved to Stuttgart where he quickly made a name for himself across Europe. In 1936, he relocated to Beverly Hills, California, which had become a haven for many artists and designers seeking artistic freedom. There he quietly found work designing modern homes and interiors, often for Hollywood celebrities. Laszlo created textiles, lamps, as well as custom furniture for his modernist homes and corporate interiors. His comfortable, yet elegant designs pay tribute to the modern luxury and easy livability of the early to mid 20th Century interiors of Vienna.
This enamel on sterling case really is one of the very best fired enamel examples of its type. It has a wonderful range of beautifully toned and colored enamel with foil backing in some areas which also gives it extra luminosity and metallic glow. It is in perfect condition and the detail and masterful artistic quality of the painting is also extremely fine and exquisitely rendered.
It has all the style and characteristics of the accomplished Neue Shachlichkeit (or New Realism / Objectivity) painting style Laszlo would have been familiar with and exposed to either in Berlin or Stuttgart as well as the New Realism style in Vogue in Vienna, where Laszlo also worked in the 1920’s. Considering the difficulty in controlling fired enamel, this exceptional Laszlo enameled case is a bargain by comparison of the price per square inch of a comparable painting on canvas such as a Christian Schad or Otto Dix! In fact, paintings are vastly more simple to execute and immediately rendered by comparison to a fired enamel “painting” on sterling like this exceptional case which would require a very lengthy and tedious process to accomplish a work of this caliber.
Paul Laszlo left Germany for America in 1936 and established a successful design firm in Beverly Hills, became an American citizen and lived happily in Southern California for the rest of his life.
Paul Laszlo Rare Art Deco Enameled Sterling Cigarette Case c.1925
REINHOLD KLAUS (1881-1963) Vienna, Austria
CARL GEYLING ATELIER (founded 1841) Vienna, Austria
Man with tophat and flowers c. 1930
Window of stained and hand-painted leaded glass
Provenance: Estate of Carl Geyling (1814-1880), Vienna
H: 17 3/4″ x W: 14 1/2″
Reinhold Klaus studied from 1898-1902 with Alfred Roller at the Kaiserlich-Königliche Kunstgewerbeschule in Vienna. In 1914 Klaus married into the Carl Geyling family and became extensively involved with with stained glass painting. As early as 1918 Klaus worked on a stained glass window for the Siegestempel am Bisamberg in Vienna. In 1934 he became a professor of stained glass painting at the Kunstgewerbeschule, as well as creative director of the C. Geylings Erben glass painting company. Reinhold Klaus, a member of the Künstlerhaus since 1924 received many prizes and honors. He worked on commissions for the St. Veits cathedral in Prague, the St. Stephan cathedral in Vienna and many others.
ARAM GESAR USA
Venetian Blinds 1979
Ciba-chrome print, maple frame
Signed: 790069, LXXIX (on back)
Framed size: H: 17 9/16” x W: 23 ½”
Price: $24,000
Aram Gesar has been published internationally and has exhibited his photographic work in New York, San Francisco, Zurich and Geneva since 1977. As a producer, art director and photographer, Gesar created advertising campaigns for major corporations in the U.S. and Europe focusing on the fields of travel, banking, financial services, aerospace and motion pictures. He also created and produced documentaries on travel, aviation and yachting for national cable networks and the home video markets and television commercials and corporate programs for various U.S. and European corporations.
Gesar is currently one of the leading international experts on travel and air transport, and the founder and CEO of The Pyramid Media Group, which includes several magazines, newsletters, web sites, books, eBooks and other publications integrating a spectrum of business, travel and aviation content.
ROYCROFT COPPER SHOP East Aurora, N.Y.
Pair of candlesticks c. 1915.
Hand wrought and textured copper, silver-plated.
Marks: impressed R, in orb with cross, ROYCROFT
For more information see: The American Arts & Crafts Movement in Western New York 1900-1928, Bruce A. Austin (Rochester Institute of Technology, 1992); Arts & Crafts Movement in New York State 1890’s – 1920’s, Coy Ludwig (Hamilton, N.Y.: Gallery Association of New York, 1983).
H: 6″ x W: 6 7/8″ x D: 2 5/8″