Tramonto a New York (Sunset over New York) three-seater sofa designed by Gaetano Pesce for Cassina, £6000 at Lyon & Turnbull's sale of works from the Steve Allison collection.
A group of works by the Italian architect, artist and designer Gaetano Pesce (1939-2024) was among the highlights of the Lyon & Turnbull (26% buyer’s premium) Modern Made sale.
The collection, among the largest in the UK, was formed by the photographer and graphic designer Steve Allison (b.1948).
L&T’s head of sale Philip Smith described Allison’s collection as “an exemplar of how to acquire fantastic things on a relatively modest budget, by following your eye and your passions”.
Bold aesthetic
Allison – an integral part of Cardiff’s theatre, dance and music scene since the 1970s – has collected Pesce’s work for many years.
Examples of most of Pesce’s best-known interior furnishings from the Eighties, Nineties and Noughties were included.
All share the design pioneer’s famously bold aesthetic employing vibrant colours, experimental materials and inventive organic forms. It is an indication of current collecting trends that of the 70 pieces offered in 58 lots on April 26, just three failed to sell.
The Tramonto a New York (Sunset over New York) three-seater sofa was designed as a large orange sun sinking below the Manhattan skyline.
Intended to capture the energy of ‘the capital of 20th century’, it was made by Cassina in small numbers from 1984.
Allison acquired his from MAD Design, Netherlands in 2003. At L&T it was estimated at £3000- 5000 and sold at £6000.
Pesce was a champion of new materials such as injection moulded resin and polyurethanes but – breaking with the modernist philosophy of standardisation – created unique art-design pieces that invited flaws as part of the design process.
“I like beauty full of mistakes because we are human. Perfection is for machines, it is obsolete, gone”, he said.
The collection included examples of the Moss and Spaghetti range of vases produced for Fish Design which celebrate the uncertainty of their manufacture. These were among a group of small-scale furnishing pieces sold for prices between £320 and £750.
Greene Street Chair designed by Gaetano Pesce for Vita, £5500 at Lyon & Turnbull's sale of works from the Steve Allison collection.
Every version of Pesce’s Greene Street Chair fashioned in cast resin, steel and rubber is subtly different.
Designed for Vitra, Italy in 1984, the form was named after the street where Pesce started his company in Soho, New York.
The example here was made in black resin and took £5500.
Warm welcome
Gaetano Pesce door from the headquarters of the Chiat-Day advertising agency, £7500 at Lyon & Turnbull's sale of works from the Steve Allison collection.
Estimated at £2000-3000 and sold at £7500 was one of the interior doors from the headquarters of the Chiat-Day advertising agency, a seminal 1994 commission that helped shape the playful communal office spaces of today’s culture industries.
Pesce’s light-hearted resin and steel doors were modelled in a range of forms from telephones to baseball boots with ‘melting’ handles.
Allison had bought his ‘tennis racquet’ door from LA Modern Auctions in 2003 at a time when auction prices for these fanciful forms were around $2000-4000 each.
Chiat-Day 1996 poured resin and enamelled steel Waffle Table, £8000 at Lyon & Turnbull's sale of works from the Steve Allison collection.
Also from the Chiat-Day project was a 1996 poured resin and enamelled steel Waffle Table sold at £8000. It had been acquired at auction house Wright’s of Chicago in April 2009 for $2700.
A rare piece from Pesce’s series of abstract figurative lamps, collectively known as the Some of Us lamps, sold at £4600 (it had made $4200 at Wright in 2008).
Gaetano Pesce Some of Us series lamp, £4600 at Lyon & Turnbull's sale of works from the Steve Allison collection.
Each of these, made in editions of 20, have a distinct countenance and form, that glows when lit. This example, standing 3ft 1in (92cm) high dated to c.2000.
The selection of 58 lots represented approximately half of Allison’s Pesce collection with a further selection to be sold in October.
Brian Clarke's Plumb lot
The Plumb Window I, 1974, by Brian Clarke, £30,000 at Lyon & Turnbull.
The Lyon & Turnbull Modern Made sale included what was the largest early domestic commission by the renowned British stained-glass artist, Sir Brian Clarke (b.1953).
A polyptych, with 15 parts creating an abstracted landscape, The Plumb Window I was commissioned for the home of a north of England family and has since become one of the artist’s most exhibited and published works.
“The 1974 work is I think the most significant of my early works and one that I remain fascinated by today. I was 21 when I created it – and fabricated it myself – during the brief period I lived in Preston”, said Clarke. “I saw it then, and see it now, as a sort of doorway or window onto another world.”
It was estimated at £30,000-50,000 and got away at the lower end of expectations.
