Incollect Magazine - Issue 14

18 www.incollect.com HAPPENINGS Claude Lalanne, an Important Ensemble of Fifteen Mirrors, from the Salon de Musique of Yves Saint Laurent and Pierre Bergé’s Paris apartment. Photo: Courtesy of Sotheby’s The collectible design market made a roaring comeback on April 22 at Sotheby’s in New York, where a group of 15 mirrors by Claude Lalanne set a new auction record for the artist, selling for $33.5 million — more than doubling the $15 million estimate. According to Sotheby’s, this is the highest price ever paid at auction for a work of collectible design. The sale shattered the previous record sale of $31.4 million for husband François-Xavier Lalanne’s 1976 copper Hippopotame Bar, pièce unique set in December 2025. The mirrors once belonged to fashion designer Yves Saint Laurent, who commissioned them for the music room of his Paris apartment. Each of the mirrors was framed in gilt bronze and decorated with galvanized copper leaves from the artist’s garden. The mirrors came to auction as part of the sale of the collection of Jean and Terry de Gunzburg, who bought the mirrors in 2009 for €1.9 million ($2.4 million) from the almost half-billion-dollar sale of Yves Saint Laurent’s personal possessions. Sotheby’s sale of the de Gunzburg collection brought $96 million, making it the most valuable single-owner design sale in Sotheby’s history. “The de Gunzburg Collection has, in many ways, redrawn the horizon, setting a benchmark the market will be measuring itself against for years to come,” Jodi Pollack, the auction house’s chairman of 20th-century design, commented. “While the Lalanne mirrors were the undeniable centerpiece, what was most exciting was the depth of bidding across both prewar and postwar design. It was a resounding affirmation of design’s ascendance within the broader art market.” Market Roars Back Collectible Design