Magnussen worked for Gorham as artistic director for only a short time just before the Depression after emigrating to the US in 1925.
This 75oz footed bowl, marked Gorham alongside Magnussen’s monogram, assumes a hand-hammered 16in (40.5cm) petal form supported by a cylindrical base and four spherical feet of turquoise.
A marriage of Danish Arts & Crafts and the Art Deco style, it is typical of the innovative mixed-media designs that helped reinvigorate Gorham’s domestic silver line in the late 1920s but ultimately sold poorly.
This piece, part of a group of silver items from a New England educational institution (it had a scratched accession date 09/27/89 to the base) is one of only a handful of examples of its type. The estimate on December 12 was $3000-5000.
After disappointing sales, Magnussen left Gorham shortly before the Wall Street Crash in 1929 to work for the New York branch of the German firm August Dingeldein & Sohn.
In 1932 he set up on his own, working first in Chicago and then in Los Angeles.
