Top end ceramics and portrait miniatures were followed by Old Master and European furniture sales that included the record breaking £17m Badminton cabinet and Juan Sanches Cotan's extremely rare £3.6m still life (both offered for sale by Barbara Johnson).
The auctioneers ended the week on December 9 and 10 with a marathon two-day house sale. The French furnishings of the Pavillon de Chougny (a secluded retreat cloistered away in the centre of Geneva that was originally created for Jaime Ortiz Patino) were a 458-lot mix of period pieces and modern creations by the interior decorating firm Maison Pinto. Because many of them had been acquired by the vendors very recently from the trade or at high profile auctions, the decision was made to offer them without reserve. This tempted a large crowd, some members of the trade but many more private buyers, interested in the decorative appeal of the material and drawn by the prospect of a ready to go Pinto bargain.
The result was not just a complete sell out, but the £3.6m total topped the pre-sale predictions of £2.2m-3.5m.
Although some of the more dramatic prices were paid for Pinto's modern decorations, the top price of the sale was the £360,000 paid by a European dealer for a heavyweight example of 18th century French furniture with a complete provenance. The five fauteuils and two canapés by Claude Chevigny (one shown here), which had retained their original Beauvais tapestry upholstery, were originally made for the Duc de Praslin (1712-1785) or his son for the hôtel de Choiseul- Praslin. Passing by descent and marriage to the Prince de Beauvau-Craon, they remained at the Princes' Château de Haroué for over a century until 1999 when they were sold at Sotheby's Monaco to Paris dealers Galerie Segoura from whom they were acquired for the Pavillon Chougny.
