"Dragons" armchair

Chair designed by Irish architect and designer Eileen Gray thumb|The "Dragons" armchair thumb|Glass Salon designed by Paul Ruaud with furniture by Eileen Gray, for Madame Mathieu-Levy (Juliette Lévy) milliner of the boutique J. Suzanne Talbot, 9, rue de Lota, Paris, 1922 The "Dragons" armchair (French: "Fauteuil aux Dragons") is a piece of furniture designed by the Irish architect and designer Eileen Gray between 1917 and 1919. The chair sold for €21,905,000 ($31,292,857) in 2009, establishing a new record for a piece of 20th century decorative art. Design The chair is a wooden upholstered armchair featuring two stylized lacquered dragons. It measures 61 by 91 cm.Fauteuil Aux Dragons, Vers 1917-1919 https://www.christies.com/en/lot/lot-5171305 Christie's 12 April 2016 The chair was described by auctioneers Christie's as being: "In the form of unfurling petals, upholstered in brown leather, the frame in sculpted wood, lacquered brownish orange and silver and modelled as the serpentine, intertwined bodies of two dragons, their eyes in black lacquer on a white ground, their bodies decorated in low relief with stylised clouds." Christie's additionally felt that the chair "...distills all that was so personal and so magical in the first, intimately expressive phase of Miss Gray's career — surprising, imaginative, subtly sculpted and crafted, it is a masterpiece of invention and execution." Jennifer Goff, the curator of the National Museum of Ireland's permanent exhibition of Gray's work, felt that the chair was the "perfect example of the designer who created it – completely unique [and] rather eccentric".http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/are-you-sitting-down-how-a-43m-chair-brought-to-light-a-forgotten-designer-20150921-gjrfh7.html Are you sitting down? How a $43m chair brought to light a forgotten designer Ray Edgar 25 September 2015 Sydney Morning Herald 12 April 2016 The dragon imagery and clouds depicted on the chair have been likened to those found in the iconography of traditional Chinese art, and the flowing nature of the ornately carved armrests have been compared to a "sea monster" and given the chair its "Dragons" moniker.Anthony Flint Modern Man: The Life of Le Corbusier, Architect of Tomorrow https://books.google.com/books?id=hUjCBAAAQBAJ 2014 Houghton Mifflin Harcourt 978-0-544-26222-5 110https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/art/artsales/4805374/Small-brown-armchair-sells-for-19-million.html Small brown armchair sells for £19 million 25 February 2009 The Daily Telegraph 12 April 2016 Gray worked on the chair between 1917 and 1919, lacquering the piece by hand and letting the lacquer set in her humid bathroom before spending days polishing the piece.http://www.departures.com/lifestyle/home-front/eileen-grays-modern-masterpieces Eileen Gray's Modern Masterpieces Mark Van De Walle 5 May 2011 Departures 12 April 2016June 2026 InternetArchiveBot History The chair's first owner was Gray's patron, Suzanne Talbot.http://www.metro.co.uk/news/article.html?YSLs_seat_sell_for_%A319million&in_article_id=557756 YSL's seat sells for £19million Metro.co.uk 25 February 2009Sterjova Milica 2017-09-27 The "Dragons" armchair by Eileen Gray is the most expensive chair ever sold at auction https://www.wallswithstories.com/furniture/eileen-grays-dragons-armchair-is-the-most-expensive-chair-ever-sold-at-auction.html live https://web.archive.org/web/20210302203558/https://www.wallswithstories.com/furniture/eileen-grays-dragons-armchair-is-the-most-expensive-chair-ever-sold-at-auction.html 2021-03-02 2022-04-06 Walls with Stories en It was acquired by Parisian art dealer Cheska Vallois in 1971 for $2,700 and then sold by Vallois to the French fashion designer Yves Saint Laurent in 1973. The chair was put up for sale as part of the Yves Saint Laurent and Pierre Bergé collection in February 2009 at Christie's auction house in Paris. It sold for €21,905,000 against a pre-sale estimate of €2-3 million, establishing a new record for a piece of 20th century decorative art.Mackenzie James 25 February 2009 Record-breaking YSL auction shrugs off crisis Reuters http://uk.reuters.com/article/stageNews/idUKTRE51J5QU20090225 https://web.archive.org/web/20090228072115/http://uk.reuters.com/article/stageNews/idUKTRE51J5QU20090225 dead February 28, 2009 25 February 2009 The 2009 buyer of the chair was once again Cheska Vallois who later said that the cost of acquiring it was "the price of desire". The chair was bought by Vallois for an unknown third party erroneously reported to be Henry and Marie-Josée Kravis in March 2009.https://www.economist.com/books-and-arts/2009/03/12/correction-yves-saint-laurent Correction: Yves Saint Laurent 12 March 2009 The Economist 12 April 2016 References Category:1919 works Category:2009 in art Category:Chairs Category:Dragons in art Category:Articles with quotation marks in the title Category:Individual chairs Category:Furniture designed by architects