BASEL, Switzerland — The seventh edition of Design Miami/Basel, situated in the hanger-like Hall 5 of the Messe Basel complex and running through Sunday, is sleeker and sharper this year with 35 galleries situated on the main floor and an additional grouping of five edgier “guerilla” dealers operating on the mezzanine level.
Of that less established group, Brussels’s Victor Hunt is featuring the cutting-edge and clever work of the Swedish-German duo Humans Since 1982 and the first international viewing of “Clock Clock (White),” an ambitious wall piece made up of 24 analogue clocks programmed to display the time in various patterns on the collective face of the assembly. The individual faces of the clocks can also be programmed to create geometrical letters. It is produced in an edition of eight; one so far has sold to a Swiss collector for €22,000.
On a more traditional note, Milan’s Erastudio Apartment-Gallery elicited strong interest in architect Vincenzo de Cotiis’s prototype cross-shaped writing desk from 2012, comprised of aged silvered brass sheet, black-painted wood, and recycled wooden panels. It was on offer for €42,000. The piece is elegantly chunky, with constructivist hints of Malevich in the form.
Downstairs on the main trading floor, the entryway was vividly dominated by the installation of Jean Prouve’s rare and wonderful “Des Jours Meilleurs House” (1956), comprised of steel and retractable aluminum shutters, a creation made at the urging of the Mother Teresa-like L’Abbe Pierre to provide emergency shelter for displaced persons during a harsh Paris winter. Only two of the Spartan houses are known to exist, and Paris dealer and Prouve champion Patrick Seguin owns both — that is, until he sold the Basel version to a private collector for an undisclosed price. Sources outside the gallery speculated the price was in the €2.5 million range.
Seguin has a number of Prouve's nomadic structures in his inventory, priced between €500,000 to €8 million, largely depending on size, according to the dealer. In addition to the house, which also served as the gallery’s headquarters during the fair, Seguin sold a variety of other fare: vintage lamps and furniture by Prouve, including the Jib lamp from 1951 for €38,000 to an American collector; a cabinet from 1953 with a wooden door for €10,000; a day bed in steel, wood, and aluminum for €42,000; and a Charlotte Perriand bench from Mauritania, dating from 1956, for €18,000.
“There are more and more people involved in design now,” said Seguin, who named a handful of luminaries who had already visited the house, including contemporary art collectors David Ganek, Peter Brant, and Alberto Mugrabi. During my brief conference with Seguin, New York collector, designer, and photographer Johnny Pigozzi wandered into the Prouve house and started taking pictures of the stripped-down structure that lacks a kitchen or bathroom.
Across the way, fellow Paris dealer Jacques Lacoste, in collaboration with Seguin, had a stand devoted to the luxurious work of Jean Royere. “We’ve done very well and we sold many things,” said Lacoste, who had offloaded a magnificent Royere Polar Bear set, comprising a red mohair sofa and two matching armchairs from 1960, for €680,000 to an American collector. It had been sourced from the original owners who commissioned the pieces from the Royere studio and retained the original invoices. “Our specialty is to buy from the families of the first owners,” said the dealer, “so there’s no question about the authenticity of the pieces.”
Lacoste also sold a rare, vine-like Royere Liane wall lamp in enameled iron for a price over €100,000, a Tour Eiffel console table for €80,000, and an extraordinary group incorporating a velvet sofa and high-backed “Ambassador” armchairs for around €300,000. The ensemble was originally designed for the screening room of one of the late Shah of Iran’s houses in Tehran, though those pieces of furniture have disappeared from view. “Royere’s work is very joyful,” said Lacoste, who is preparing a catalogue raisonné of the designer in collaboration with Seguin, “and it makes for happy living because it is very feminine with many curves.”
There were plenty of iconic French designers to see this time around, and the Paris-based Galerie Jousse Entreprise devoted a solo presentation of the late Roger Tallon, famed for his industrial designs for the super-fast TGV train, Lip watches, and his collaborations with contemporary artists Yves Klein, Cesar, and Daniel Buren. Jousse featured vintage Tallon chairs and lamps, and sold a cast aluminum and foam-cushioned “Super Chaise” for €32,000. He also had luck with a somewhat tattered-looking high-backed chair in plywood and metal from the designer’s “Les Anthropomorphic” series from 1967, this particular example featuring the cut-out visage of the uniformed Charles De Gaulle covering the object. It sold for €65,000.
The gallery also sold works by other designers, including a handsome, articulated Janette Laverriere floor lamp from 1950 with its original iron patina and three light elements for €45,000.
The French theme continued at the New York/Paris-based Demisch/Danant, with both new and vintage works by the 81-year-old Maria Pergay. The gallery sold quite a few choice works: a pair of Plexiglas cube tables from the mid-1970s for €35,000; a slinky lounge chair in stainless steel with an accessorized green cushion from 1970 that was formerly in the apartment of the French actor Francois Periere for €45,000; and a similarly priced Ring Chair, one of the designer’s iconic pieces with curved legs from 1968.
The gallery, which staged a living room-like display of Pergay objects, also sold a pair of stainless steel and bronze sconces, each featuring a cast, gold-toned goat skull that possibly could be mistaken for a (less expensive) Sherrie Levine for around €40,000. “I’m happy because there’s strength in both sides, with both the recent and older material,” said partner Suzanne Demisch, who has exhibited at the design fair since its inception here in 2006. “Everyone here [at the fair] seems content and pleased with the increased support from visitors.”
Lighting was the sole theme at Paris’s Galerie Kreo, essentially an encyclopedic montage of major lighting pieces dating from the 1950s to the present by primarily French and Italian designers. Kreo had bursts of sales, including “Fresnel,” a pair of red wall sconces by Joe Colombo for €4,000, a Gio Ponti illuminated relief for €10,000, and two major ceiling lights by Gino Sarfati, classified as “#2109” and “#2068,” which sold for around €60,000 each.
Other illuminated standouts at Kreo ranged from Ettore Sottsass’s architectonic “Bharata,” with a black marble base and alabaster crown that sold for €8,000, and a recent edition of eight from the Bouroullac Brothers, “The Lianna” hanging lamp, completely comprised of leather, which sold for under €30,000.
If there was one piece to take away from this edition’s offerings, it would have to be the historic and still-grand Frederick Kiesler “Instrument” from 1942, which once served a multi-functional purpose at Peggy Guggenheim's avant-garde Art of This Century gallery in New York. Ulrich Fiedler of Berlin’s Galerie Ulrich Fiedler believes Kiesler made less than 30 of the organic shaped chair/table/sculpture objects in a Bronx garage with the solo help of a German carpenter. The amazing wooden object, temporarily displayed with another “Instrument” that Fiedler sold earlier on to a different client, resembles an oversized, biomorphic Jean Arp sculpture.
The gallery has already sold a number of works by other designers, including a high-backed, low armchair by British designer Gerald Summers from 1934 for €20,000 and a fully original hanging and moveable Bauhaus-era lamp by Heinrich-Siegfried Borman in aluminum and metal for €15,000. “Even the plug is orginal,” said Fiedler.
Finally, Moscow newcomers Heritage International Art Gallery had a fascinating presentation of Russian-made, mid-century and later furniture and objects, all of it unfamiliar. So far, the gallery has sold a striking, two-door cupboard made out of polished and deeply patterned nutwood from the 1960s by Yury Sluchevsky from the Stroganov Art School, which sold to a European buyer for €25,000.
Asked if the buyer knew of the designer, gallery project manager Irina Ryazanova smiled and said, “Maybe he just liked the look of it.”