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Design

Following the strong results for design masterpieces in 2017, Sotheby’s is excited to announce its upcoming Design sale on 3 May. With a wide selection of iconic pieces, this will be an opportunity to rediscover some lesser known major works.

One of the most remarkable items in the sale is a drawing table that Karl Lagerfeld commissioned François-Xavier Lalanne (estimate: €500,000-700,000). In the mid-1970s, the table entered the collection of another aesthete: the interior designer Jacques Grange, who kept it until the 1980s.

The chaise longue basculante from the former collection of the Maharajah of Indore (estimate: €120,000-180,000) typical of the work of Charlotte Perriand, Pierre Jeanneret and Le Corbusier will feature in the sale. The "Rest Machine", as its designers liked to call it, has since become an icon of 20^th Century furniture.

The highlights of the sale include a 6x6 demountable house by Jean Prouvé (estimate: €450,000-550,000). Rarely seen at auction, there are very few examples of these houses, which the Nancy architect began to build in the 1940s to rehouse war victims in the Lorraine and Franche-Comté regions.

The sale will also feature an ebony cabinet created by Marcel Coard circa 1925 (estimate: €450,000 - 550,000), an unprecedented group of ceramics by Henri Simmen and Eugénie O’Kin (estimate: between €4,000 and €30,000), a remarkable pair of screens by Eileen Gray (estimate: €400,000-600,000) and finally, creations by Pierre Chareau, Jean Dunand, Emile Gallé, Alberto Giacometti, Diego Giacometti, Claude Lalanne, Serge Mouille, Alexandre Noll, Eugène Printz, Jean Royère, Jacques Ruhlmann and Henri Van de Velde, together with a collection of mirrors by Line Vautrin. The auction will conclude with sixteen pieces which pay tribute to the work of François-Xavier Lalanne.