Rare

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.

ALEXANDRE NOLL (1890-1970) France

Covered box c. 1930

Mahogany with ebony peg details and 1 ¼ inch thick Saint-Gobain glass.

Marks: ANoll

Provenance: Private Collection New York, Galerie de Beyrie Paris, Odile Noll (A. Noll’s daughter), Alexandre Noll Estate
For more information see: Alexandre Noll, Olivier Jean-Elie, Pierre Passebon (Paris:Edition du Regard, 1999); Alexandre Noll: Les Matres de L’ Art Decoratif Contemporain, Collection dirigée par R. Moutard-Uldry edited by (Geneve: Pierre Cailler, 1954); Le Mobilier du Xxe Siécle: Dictionnaire des
Créateurs, Pierre Kjellberg (Paris: Les Éditons de l’Amateur, 1994) p. 455-456.

H: 2 1/2″ x D: 5 3/8″ x W: 8″

ARCHIBALD KNOX (1864-1933) UK
LIBERTY & CO. London

Extremely rare and important grand clock by Archibald Knox for Liberty & Co. This is the largest of all of the Tudric models designed and is inset with abalone shell on the sides, the front corners and on the hands of the clock.

Marks: TUDRIC, 098

Illustrated: The Designs of Archibald Knox for Liberty & Co., A..J. Tilbrook (London: Ornament Press Ltd., 1976) pg. 88; The Liberty Style, (Japan: Hida Takayama Museum of Arts, 1999) fig. 168, p 114; Archibald Knox, ed. by Stephen A. Martin (London: Academy Editions, 1995) p. 88.

H: 15″ x W: 7″ x D: 5″

***This is the largest clock designed by Archibald Knox for
Liberty & Co. and one of only three models known.

CHRISTOPHER DRESSER (1834-1904) UK

JAMES COUPER & SONS Glasgow, Scotland

“Clutha” vase   c. 1890

Blown strawberry glass

This Dresser form appears as Linthorpe Pottery model no. 114.

Illustrated: Truth, Beauty, Power: Dr. Christopher Dresser 1834-1904,exhib. cat. Historical Design, Inc. (New York, 1998) p. 70.

Rare model.

H: 5 1/8” x W: 6”

PAUL HAUSTEIN  (1880-1944)  Germany
HERMANN BEHRND (b. 1849) SILBERWARENFABRIK (silver) Dresden, Germany
JAKAB RAPOPORT (enamelist) Budapest, Hungary

Inkwell  c. 1900

Multicolored burgundy, purple, blue and green enamel with silver mounts, glass insert

Marks: Moon, crown, 800, HB (Hermann Behrnd mark)

Same model with variant mount illustrated: Deutsche Goldschmiede-Zeitung, n.d. (circa 1903-05), p. 23

For related works and more information see: Art Nouveau in Munich: Masters of Jugendstil, ed. Kathryn Bloom Hiesinger (Philadelphia: Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1988) pp. 67-69; Jugendstil in Dresden, Aufbruch in die Moderne, Gisela Haase et al., exh. cat. (Dresden: Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden; Wolfratshausen: Edition Minerva, 1999).

Dia: 7 1/4″ x H: 4 1/2″

ANDRÉ THURET  (1898-1965)  France

“Organic” vase/bowl  c. 1930

Handblown and formed clear glass with bubble technique encapsulating a frosty white oxide.

Signed: ANDRÉ THURET

H: 2 3/8″ x D: 4″ x W: 6 1/4″

Andre Thuret was one of the first modern French studio glass artists and a contemporary of Maurice Marinot. He was born on November 3, 1898 in Paris. It is by science that Andre Thuret came to art. It is in Thuret the engineer and the chemist who serve Thuret the vase artist.  The scientist places at the disposal of the creator of forms, rates/rhythms and colors the fluid and transparent beauty of glass and the reactions of metallic oxides. He worked in a traditional glass blowing technique at a temperature often exceeding 1,000 degrees. Thuret exhibited at the Salon d’Automne in 1928 and 1932 and obtained his first plate of the Company of Encouragement to Art. He was invited to exhibit in the United States in 1929-1930. Andre Thuret received his Chevalier of the Legion of Honor in 1947.

HENDRIK PETRUS BERLAGE  (1856 – 1934) Netherlands
BECHT & DYSERINCK for ‘t Binnenhuis

Rare Architectural Candelabrum c. 1900

Riveted and detailed “Eiffel Tower” like form in brass and copper with four feet, small cut out  designs and two bobeche trays supporting five candles.

H: 14″ x W: 8 1/4″ x D: 8 1/4″

Hendrik Petrus Berlage, a Dutch architect and designer attended the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam and a year later switched to architecture.  Berlage enrolled in 1875 in the architecture department of the Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule in Zurich. Through 1878  Berlage studied in Zurich under Gottfried Semper, whose teachings had a lasting influence on his work. After finishing these studies, Berlage spent three years traveling in Germany (1879) and Italy (1880-1881) before returning to his native Amsterdam. From 1881 Berlage was employed by the Amsterdam architect Theodor Sanders and from 1884 Berlage was a partner in the business until he opened his own practice in 1889. In 1884 he submitted a design for the projected Commodity Exchange (Beurs van Berlage) in Amsterdam, winning the competition in 1896. This building, completed in 1903, was Hendrik Paulus Berlage’s first important commission, which also solidified his reputation. Also in Amsterdam and at this same time, Berlage built the Diamond Guild building (1897-1900). In 1900 along with the architect and designer Jacob van den Bosch, Hendrik Paulus Berlage opened the gallery, “‘t Binnenhuis”. They sold their own designed furniture and objects they from 1900-1929. In 1900 Berlage was also commissioned to plan a southern extension of Amsterdam. This was Berlage’s most important contribution to urban planning and he worked on the project until 1915. In 1911 Berlage went to the US, where he saw the new buildings by Frank Lloyd Wright and Louis Sullivan. Berlage built his own house in The Hague and moved into it with his family in 1913. The Gemeentemuseum in The Hague (1919-1935) was Berlage’s last important building, however it was not completed until shortly after his death. Hendrik Petrus Berlage was the founder of the “Amsterdam School” and was a pioneer of modern architecture in the Netherlands. In his 1905 essay “Gedanken über Stil in der Baukunst”, Berlage fiercely criticized 19th-century historicizing architecture as pompous, reserving his praise for the austere simplicity of early period styles. His criticism was severe since he stated flatly that historicizing architecture was all appearance rather than reality, was not art; too much was imitation, more iron was used than stone, and so on. Hendrik Petrus Berlage was therefore an early critic of Historicism even though his Amsterdam Exchange still reveals Romanesque features.

ROSE CABAT (1914-2015) USA

Rare and important large scale “Feelie” c. 1980-85

Thin walled porcelain vessel with a silky satiny matte drip glaze

Signed: incised CABAT on bottom

For more information on Rose Cabat see: Rose Erni Cabat Retrospective 1936-1986 (Tuscon, AZ: Tuscon Museum of Art, 1986)

H: 3 5/8″

Price: $1,650

Rose Cabat was an American studio ceramicist living in Tucson. Considered one of the most important ceramic artists of the Mid-century Modernist movement, Cabat is best known for her innovative glazes on small porcelain pots called “feelies” which she developed in the 1960s. Her organic forms often resemble the shape of onions and figs, and her glazes range from organic to jewel tones. Cabat was born in 1914 in the Bronx, New York, began to work in ceramics in the late 1930′s, and moved to Arizona in 1942, where she continued to make innovative ceramics.

Feelies:
Feelies are described as onion, fig, cucumber, and saucer-shaped ceramic vases terminating in an upward closed neck. Bruce Block, an avid collector, has described them as sensual and tactile with a very specific unforgettable texture, spiritual seeming to contain a type of energy. Rose Cabat had developed a silky satiny glaze, and it wasn’t until around 1960 that she had hit upon the first of the appropriate form, svelte and sleek to match the glaze. She exclaimed, “Now this one’s a feelie.”, coining the term. Upon developing the new glazes, she felt that she needed new forms to apply the glazes to, different from what she made before, “craft fair” style coiled heads and wind bells. She is quoted as saying, “The old things did not look good … I wanted simpler shapes that went with the glazes.”They are typically globular in shape, tightening down to a minuscule neck glazed to a satin surface. The tactile experience is most important. The nature of the neck is such that it is closed, so narrow that it cannot hold anything. Cabat would reply when asked why the necks of her feelies are so narrow, “A vase can hold weeds or flowers, but can’t it just be a spot of beauty?”

OHLSSON & RICE (founded 1941) Los Angeles, CA
Tether Race Red car Model No. 88

Gas powered tether car racer 1950

Steel and various metals with the car and trailer details painted red, rubber tires and cork details

The license plate reads: California, 19-50, 61U421

H: 5″ x L” 13 1/2″ x D: 7 1/2″

Price: $3,000

In 1941 Irv Ohlsson teamed up with Harry Rice, and the firm of Ohlsson & Rice was founded producing model race cars and propellers. No other engines at the time combined the reliability, ease of maintenance, simplicity of operation and unlimited life of the Ohlsson & Rice engines. The Second World War put a temporary hold on their success, however, as all manufacturing facilities were turned over to military production. By the time the war shut down their production, they had produced about 75,000 engines.

As soon as the war was over, Ohlsson & Rice got back into production. Even with a shortage of needed materials and machines somewhat worn out by 3-shift a day wartime production use, they jumped back into a market that had a seemingly endless demand for their products. Modelers were hungry to get back into flying, and O & R took advantage of the market by buying the machinery needed to meet the huge demand.

Ohllson & Rice die cast tether cars were first manufactured in 1946. The early model cars had solid rear brake drums. open air front grill, 10 air vent slots in the seat, windshield, manual fuel pump, external hand brake lever, 4 nerf bars or radius rods,  and plated front axle.  The cars were fitted with a .23 or .29 Ohlsson and Rice engine. The easiest way to tell their plane engines from the car engines was the exhaust port.  The cars have a straight cut exhaust and the planes had an angled cut port.  However they are interchangeable except to be estetically correct. Basic colors included white, black, red , blue and yellow. The .29 engine were available in either spark ignition models or with a glow plug.  In the early days Ohlsson and Rice had trouble with their engines and discovered a lot of the problems were due to inferior fuel sources. To rectify this they started to manufacture their own Nitro Glow fuel.  This seemed to cure their engine problems. The later models in the fifties went to a closed front grill , 1 air vent slot in seat,  hollow brake drums,  no windshield and a smaller .049 engine. The last of the midget racers were made in 1959.

GEORGE JAKOB HUNZINGER (1835-1898) Germany/ USA

Chair 1876

Yellow and blue painted elaborately turned wood, blue thread woven covered metal band mesh seat (original condition)

Marks: George Hunzinger Patent 1876

Illustrated: The Furniture of George Hunzinger, Invention and Innovation in Nineteenth-Century America, Barry R. Harwood (Brooklyn: Brooklyn Museum of Art, 1997) p.103.

H: 32″ x D: 17″ x W: 20″

GEORGE JAKOB HUNZINGER   (1835-18989)  USA

George Hunzinger emigrated in the 1850s from the Black Forest region of Germany where his family had worked as cabinetmakers since the 17th century.  Settling in New York, he joined a community of 3,000 German furniture makers but soon distinguished himself as a maker of patent furniture and “fancy chairs”.  Hunzinger’s innovative designs are often associated with the development of the Aesthetic Movement in America.  By the 1870s, his chairs were sought after by many Americans as accent pieces for their parlors. The woven mesh or upholstery of these innovative chairs follows the original intention of the maker and the turned frame has an avant-garde, colorful and rather contemporary feeling painted in a combination of a rich ochre yellow and cobalt blue, a color combo that was highly prized for it’s eccentricity in Victorian America.