Pick of the week

We are thrilled to be 'The Pick of the Week' in this week's Antiques Trade Gazette

Read all about the record breaking Lenci figure we sold last week.

 

By 

Roland Arkell

• 07 Oct 2019

Stylish Lenci skyscraper lady is on top of the auction world after £34,000 bid

The stylish Art Deco pottery figures for which Ars Lenci became celebrated were first shown at the Turin international exhibition in 1928.

Among the large-scale models unveiled that year was Il Grattacielo (Skyscraper), a striking figure of a young lady with a compact and powder puff standing on one of the high-rise buildings that had began to occupy Europe’s land-strapped cities.

As with many Lenci models, the designer Abele Jacopi (1882-1957) took a cue from the pages of Vogue magazine, dressing the subject in a modish black and white polka dot dress with orange bow.

Local source

The example offered for sale at Boldon Auction Galleries near Sunderland on October 2 was in relatively good condition with just some small chips to the extremities.

It came for sale from a local source with an estimate of just £100-150 – the sort of sum that one of the limited edition reproductions of this figure might make.

Instead, with the painted mark Lenci Made in Italy, Torino, 28, it attracted a host of online and phone bidders before selling at £34,000 (plus 17.5% buyer’s premium) to a buyer on thesaleroom.com.

The price is thought to be a new record for Lenci. It was almost twice the £18,000 bid at Christie’s South Kensington in 2011 for another (restored) version of Il Grattacielo and bettered the £32,000 bid in the same rooms in 2006 for the 21in (53cm) figure of a coquettish nude in Egyptian headdress titled Abissinia.