The Bunny Mellon Sale at Sotheby's
The forthcoming sale, Property from the Collection of Mrs. Paul Mellon at Sotheby's, promises to be a rare event for anyone interested in the decorative or fine arts, or simply fine living. Sales like this do not happen very often anymore: the sheer breadth of Mrs. Mellon's collection ranges from Rothko paints to garden tools. Her collection of porcelains could have a sale in their own right and includes multiple lots of Meissen, Chelsea (a rare red anchor period asparagus tureen lot 483) and at least 4 lots from the rare Longton Hall factory (including two even rarer melon form pieces, lot 388 and lot 443) and many others. The Interiors sale alone will take 5 separate sale sessions at Sotheby's spread over 3 days, with separate sale dates for the "Masterworks" and another for "Jewels and Objects of Vertu."
The other aspect of this sale (sales) which makes it so unique, is that it is a complete "collection" from a collector of a previous era. This very private person, and artist in her own right, assembled such a broad and yet specific range of high quality pieces. Vegetable-form porcelains, garden tools, rare books, fine art, baskets and so on. I may be wrong, but this type of collector does not exist any longer, or they are at least a critically endangered species.
We were lucky to every now and then work for Mrs. Mellon through her various decorators over years. Besides lot 337 which is a set of 3 of the original version of the etageres we designed and created initially for Billy Baldwin, below is a low bookcase and chair model we made for Mrs. Mellon, including their reference sketches from our design archive. If you have a chance to visit the sale exhibition, it begins on November 15 for the Interiors portion.
The reference sketch from the Victoria & Son Design Archive for a side chair made for Mrs. Mellon
The only photo we have of the chair model made for Mrs. Mellow, in this case the armchair version.
Design Archive sketch for a very versatile Louis XV style book table, made by Victoria & Son for Mrs. Mellon
Not the exact table made for Mrs. Mellon, but the floor model of the design.