Auction alert: Mid Century Design

This week, our featured auction is the Mid Century Design sale that takes place on Friday 20th August, commencing at 10:30am. That’s tomorrow folks!

Mid century modern is one of our favourite eras for interior design, it was really hard to narrow down the lots we wanted to share. There are so many quality pieces of furniture, art, pottery, glass, lighting and the rest.

Although the auctioneers – W&H Peacock – are based in Bedford, bidding at this sale is entirely online.

Do be aware, on top of the final hammer price there’s a buyer’s premium inc. 17.5%+VAT (plus an additional online commission of 5%+VAT if you bid via thesaleroom.com). Budget wisely if you’re planning on bidding.

Lot 6: Ernest Race for Isokon Plus, a Penguin Donkey Mark II bookcase in white, label to the underside *Originally designed in 1963
Est £250 – £350

Lot 18: ’Brillo, For Instant Shine’, print with embellishments, numbered B1-12-64, 20 x 35cm
Est £40 – £60

Lot 49: Jens Quistaard, a 1960s Danish teak lattice tray with six moulded glass dishes, together with a pair of teak salt and peppers by Digsmed
Est £150 – £200

Lot 147: An orange moulded glass table lamp with an abstract brightly coloured shade
Est £50 – £80

Lot 158: Pierre Paulin for Ligne Roset, a French two-seater ‘Pumpkin’ sofa in orange, together with the matching stool

Lot 164: A faux bamboo brass finished two-tier cocktail trolley with glass shelves, in the French manner, h. 77cm

Lot 167: A Bernard Rooke ‘Totem’ pottery lamp with a matching shade, signed
Est £150 – £200

Lot 239: A Franco Albini wicker lobster pot footstool
Est £50 – £80

Lot 244: A 1970s woollen floor rug, the cream ground with orange, yellow and black abstract shapes, 160 x 94cm
Est £30 – £40

Lot 287: A Dutch three-tier shelving unit enamelled in yellow, red and grey by Tomado, w. 66cm
Est £100 – £150

Designer Desire: Jaap Ravelli

Jaap Ravelli (1916-2011) was a Dutch potter probably best known for his black & white African inspired figures of people and animals.

In 1943, Jaap – in partnership with his brother Dick – founded their company, D. Ravelli & Co, Sierkunst Atelier in Leiden, in the south of Holland. Jaap was the artisan maker, whilst Dick concentrated on the management of the business.

The following year, a visit to a pottery kiln inspired the brothers to set up their own pottery in 1944. The oven remained unused during the war years, a reason being that the chimney wasn’t high enough to generate enough of an updraught. Eventually, in 1946, the oven fired its first pieces. They were akin to the pottery made in Delft and Gouda and bore little resemblance to the later pottery for which Ravelli became known.

In 1947, the company relocated to Valkenburg, to riverside premises on the Old Rhine.

During and immediately after the war, there was a shortage of practical, domestic-use pottery so the Ravellis decided to concentrate on making teapots and cups & saucers. They transported their very first products by bicycle from Central Station, Amsterdam to Waterlooplein market (the oldest flea market in the Netherlands), where they sold them to a trader for 200 guilders. This was their first ever sale.

As well as his own wares, Ravelli took on a couple of collaborations. A range of teak furniture was produced in the 1950s, designed by Louis Van Teeffelen for Wébé, which included small tile inserts designed by Ravelli – two examples are included in the montage above.

Unfortunately, as a result of increasing competition from international manufacturers, Potterie Ravelli ceased trading in 1977.

There’s a richly illustrated biography (in Dutch) entitled, Ravelli: de geschiedenis van een potterie 1944 – 1977 . It was written by John de Koning, an avid collector of Ravelli pottery. An English language kindle version, The history of a pottery in Valkenburg, The Netherlands 1944 – 1977, is listed for sale on the USA Amazon site.

In the 1989 foreword to the book, Ravelli writes:

The large amount of work that was produced over a period of 33 years was, of course, not the work of one man alone. None of the work could have been produced without the thousands of hours put in by my brother Dick and the other employees down through the years. I can honestly say that there wasn’t a single day in my life when I didn’t go to work with a sense of pleasure and fulfilment, something I now regard as an enormous privilege.

There are quite a few examples of Ravelli’s designs available to buy on Etsy and eBay.

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Additional image credits:
collECKtor

Designer Desire: Margaret de Patta

I have to credit Justin with sourcing today’s designer – perhaps he was doing a bit of online research to find me an early birthday present! Anyway, Margaret de Patta (1903–1964) was an American jewellery designer and is this week’s featured creator.

She initially trained as a painter and sculptor however, when she couldn’t find a wedding ring that she liked, she designed her own! Her aesthetic became heavily influenced by the Bauhaus Movement; in 1941 she studied under László Moholy-Nagy at the School of Design in Chicago, Illinois.

Margaret de Patta worked a lot in sterling silver; creating rings, earrings, brooches and pendants using semi-precious materials such as moss agate, rutilated quartz, onyx, amber and ebony. They’ve been described as wearable art – and I don’t disagree!

I could only source three examples of De Patta’s work currently for sale. A few copies of the accompanying catalogue to the 2012, Space Light Structure: The Jewelry of Margaret De Patta exhibition, is available on Amazon. Oakland Museum of California houses the largest collection of her work.

Her papers are held at the Archives of American Art at the Smithsonian Institution. They were donated in two instalments in 2003 and 2015 by Martha Bielawski, the second wife of Margaret De Patta’s second husband, Eugene Bielawski. Her archive includes correspondence, writings, teaching files, exhibition files, personal business records, printed material, artwork & sketchbooks and photographs.

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Additional image credits:

Art Jewelery Forum | Wallpaper

Designer Desire: Mies van der Rohe

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Last week we featured a gorgeous Detroit townhouse designed by a very famous architect. It was only then that we realised that we’d never really highlighted him – just the occasional mention in passing about some of the furniture that he designed.

Mies van der Rohe (1886-1969) is probably the most influential modernist architect to have ever lived – and we’re not saying that lightly. The skyscraper would not be what it is today without his forward-thinking ideas. The concept drawing (first image below) was created with the idea of using soaring glass and steel on the outside of a building – something that had never been done before. It was 1921 and the architectural world wasn’t ready; the design he submitted was unsuccessful.

He was a contemporary of other eminent Bauhaus architects and designers such as Walter Gropius, Le Corbusier, Marcel Breuer, Wassily Kandinsky and László Moholy-Nagy. He become director of the Bauhaus in 1930, remaining until he emigrated to Chicago in 1937 to become head of the architecture department at Illinois Institute of Technology.

You get an understanding of Mies van der Rohe, his methods and his beliefs from some of the quotes that have been attributed to him:

We must be as familiar with the functions of our building as with our materials. We must learn what a building can be, what it should be, and also what it must not be

Architecture has the power to create order out of unholy confusion

We’ve selected just a few of jis many and varied ground-breaking buildings; he’s designed houses, apartment blocks, a kiosk, a petrol station and a public library.

We’ve placed them in chronological order, according to the date they were completed, to illustrate his progression.