T
he Design 17/20 auction, which broadly features objects dating from the 17th to 20th centuries, is defined by a worldly exploration of design across the centuries, and encompasses decorative and collectable European furniture, clocks, silver, ceramics and objects of vertu targeted at the growing audience of new collectors.
In a city that abounds with storied properties, this house in Holmby Hills stands out as a sort of Regency villa transplanted to the warmer climes of the Pacific coast. Originally built in the 1930s for the comédienne Fanny Brice, better known at the Funny Girl of stage and screen, its most recent owner recreated the interiors to showcase her collection of Fine Art and Georgian and Regency furniture. “Like all the best decorating, English style doesn’t date,” she observes, and the result was a series of rooms distinguished by layers of texture and colour, which like all the greatest English country houses evoked a sense of having been lived in for generations.
The collection forms the opening sequence of both Sotheby’s spring auctions of Furniture and Design on 4th and 5th April, and highlights include an important Queen Anne Japanned Bureau Cabinet by W. Price signed and dated 1713, an impressive pair of Cary’s 21-inch library globes, a pair of Louis XV giltwood fauteuils by Heurtaut, chairs and tables by Gillows, Herend Rothschild and Dodie Thayer dinner services, and carefully formed assemblages of objects ranging from model staircases, ball clocks, Tartanware and ship dioramas to Palissy ware ceramics and 19th century hat moulds. The collection fully reflects the personality of the owner and her triumphant interpretation of the Regency style under the California sun.
An important Milton Avery oil on canvas, Rippled Sea, will be offered in the Modern Day Auction, New York, on 17 May 2023.
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