A range of items is up at auction in the Macclesfield saleroom of Adam Partridge on May 18-19 which Billy and his wife Pamela bought from the HaRry Art & Furniture store in Los Angeles.
The furniture is being sold individually with estimates ranging from £200-300 for a chair up to £2000-3000 for the large shaped settee.
‘HaRry’ is Harry Segil, a native of South Africa whose LA store seemed to be frequented by the stars. On his website he says other customers for his design skills include ‘Madonna, Cyndi Lauper, John Cusack, Robin Williams, Ringo Starr, Diane Keaton, Valentino, to name a few’.
A Chicago Tribune article said: “In the mid-‘80s, Segil took the design world by storm after he opened an antiques showroom, the Segil Gallery, and began to fill it with wildly inventive furniture that he had first made ‘just for fun, just for myself’. Like him, it had big personality - a whimsy and theatrical posture that, from the get-go, captivated celebrities.”
That story was written at a time when Segil was downsizing, in 2004, and Bonhams & Butterfields auctioned off some of the most important pieces that October.
Segil’s private furniture collection on offer included many of the most significant names in 1950s and ‘60s furniture design such as a space-age cantilever chair by Vernor Panton and a tulip table with accompanying chairs by Eero Saarinen.
The HaRry Segil Collection also featured 10 original designs by Segil himself. At the time, he was reported as saying: “My furniture is a great celebration of American culture, of everything wonderful and colourful about America - its sense of fun, its vitality, its music, movies, its sense of whimsy. You could even say that each piece of furniture I design is a symphony to America.”
