For those Marlon Brando fans out there, the appearance of the seldom seen R. Lalique Du Barry box coming up at auction on November 19th, and which is referred to in certain esoteric circles as “The Godfather Box”, brings back fond memories of what was perhaps Brando’s greatest modern movie role. The box appeared in the original Godfather Movie released in 1972 (was it that long ago – 48 years as of 2020?) in a bit of a cameo appearance. A Du Barry is coming up for sale at Kodner Galleries in Florida. Most times you see this box with the cover missing (go figure!), but this one is apparently complete. Next time you see the original movie, watch for it! And when you contact Kodner Galleries, don’t forget to tell them you saw this great R Lalique box here, at RLalique.com. And for all the information we have about the Du Barry Box including many sale examples plus a link to the movie clip showing the box with Brando, see the Du Barry Box Model Page in the Rene Lalique Catalogue.
Significant restoration and a 1 feedback seller, but rare has hen’s teeth, and hard to find in any condition. The R Lalique Perfume People (sorry about the alliteration, couldn’t resist, but at least we didn’t single out the Particularly Passionate ones) and R Lalique collectors of all stripes might find it worth checking into. Something tells us that this may not be the first ride at the rodeo for this bottle, but no way to know without some investigation. And either way, a cool and hard to get, early R Lalique design. The Ebay Item Number is 120333834682.
Christies South Kensington’s Semi-Annual Sale of the works of the great Rene Lalique, posted a very respectable sale total of £318,450 including buyer’s premium. The sale had a catalogued 126 lots, but a couple were withdrawn and not offered. A total of 90 lots sold, for a respectable take up rate of 71%, which would be bit higher if the withdrawals were removed from consideration. High seller was of course the fresh to market R Lalique 1929 Cire Perdue Vase Feuilles Fougeres, CP551, which appears in the R Lalique Catalogue Raisonne only with information that it exists, and without even a drawing, let alone a picture. A photo of this vase has graced our home page for the better part of the past month. Measuring around 4.75 inches high (slightly smaller than a Rampillon Vase), this unique vase had a high relief design, and was in nearly original condition. The buyer was a London dealer in the room, thought by some observers to be acting on behalf of another dealer that wished to remain anonymous (intrigue). Big question – Who will step up to tell Christie’s “I saw it at RLalique.com”? These concerns aside, it sold for £32,450 including the buyer’s premium, against an estimate of £20,000 to £30,000.
Here is the video from the British Antiques Roadshow when they appraised the newly found Cire Perdue for the consignor:
For more info on the unique cire perdue creations of Rene Lalique, visit the Lalique Cire Perdue section of the Rene Lalique Bio.
Colored vases dominated the rest of the high selling list, comprising 5 of the 7 other lots to break £10,000. These included R Lalique Red Poissons, Blue Perruches, Blue Tuileries, Blue Milan, and an Green Languedoc Vases, in addition to an R Lalique Opal Bacchantes and a Boule De Gui Chandelier. A successful and solid sale with much bidding activity in the room from dealers and collectors, and phone bidders active on a very high percentage of lots.
The Georges Clairin Watercolor, approximately 12″ by 9″, inscribed with the artist’s name and the dedication “a mon ami Lalique” (to my friend Lalique), and discussed in a previous post in this R Lalique Blog, sold at Sotheby’s London today, November 12th, for £11,000 plus 25% buyer’s premium of £2750 for a total price of £13,750, or roughly $21,000 at today’s exchange rates, all against an estimate of £6,000 to £8,000. A strong result for a great looking art nouveau watercolor with an extremely close tie to the great Rene Lalique. Hopefully, the buyer let ’em know that they saw it here, at RLalique.com!
Bonhams New Bond Street in London featured 51 lots of R Lalique as the lead items up for auction in their Design 1860-1945 Sale today, November 12th. A respectable mixed offering of mainly middle market models, 40 of the lots sold for a take up rate of near 80%. While our favorite lot here at RLalique.com was a wonderful R Lalique Deux Figurines Silvered 1913 Hand Mirror selling in the original fitted case and which made £2160 including premium, there are a couple of high sellers in the range of over ten times that result. A decent looking opalescent R Lalique Bacchantes Vase on original stand made £26,400 including premium, but was nosed out as the top lot by a very attractive birds eye maple R Lalique 1914 Figurines coffret, featuring 5 glass panels and being around a foot long, which made £27,600 including the premium. If we figured it right, the total was £116,832 for all the R Lalique including the premium.
See the Lalique Bio section on Lalique Auctions for more information about Lalique auction sales worldwide!
Another great Ebay lot – an RLalique Masques Decanter. Ebay item 360102807585 – Sans stopper, but cheap as chips at 162 AUS as we write this….. Maybe a great chance to pick up a Rene Lalique Decanter with a classic and popular design at a reasonable price. This is one of the popular Lalique Decanters!
A great looking RLalique Ronsard Opalescent Vase appeared out of Oklahoma on Ebay this morning. $1750, no reserve, and the ad states no damage. Lots of photos from a high volume Power Seller. Seems like it might be worth checking out before it disappears.
1. To question the accuracy of any fact or statement on our website! You say we have something wrong, or even a little different shade of reality, let us know your facts!
2. To question the completeness of any fact of statement on our website! If you have information to add to what we’ve said, either that would create a different impression, a different reality than we may have, or just to make our information more complete, let us know your facts!
This is not an “I love your website” or “I hate your website” thread. It’s a chance to amend or correct the information we present if you think we got it wrong. This should be to the greater good of the entire RLalique community and if we’re wrong about something, we will gladly be corrected. We only ask that you keep in mind the enduring words of Dragnet’s Joe Friday: “Just the facts ma’am!”
Hopefully there won’t be too many corrections! But come what may, we welcome your input and information.
A long time collector has had this piece for a long time…makes sense.
The collector bought it as a cachet. Not in the cachet section of any book we’ve seen.
RLalique? A clever ploy?
An un-recorded cachet? A converted stopper? A missing piece to a really big puzzle?
A photoshop photo of nothing created to perplex readers of this blog? And what is with the removable metal thing on the bottom, obviously removed for the upside down photo?
Hmmm. Does anyone have any thoughts on what it is?
UPDATE December 2017:
This has been resolved!
The perfume bottle for the Miro Dena fragrance Ambre Nouveau and the same bottle for D’Argelys Eau De Cologne and their fragrance Amante have this one side decorated grapes on vines “seal” as their stopper!
The bottle was made by the H. Saumont Glassworks in the late 1920’s.
On Wednesday November 12th in London, at Sothebys Sale of European Paintings, is a great 9″ by 12″ watercolor and gouache on paper by the famous French artist Georges Clairin, a contemporary and friend of the great Rene Lalique, as well as their mutual friend and Rene Lalique patron, Sarah Bernhardt. This wonderful watercolor was a gift from Clairin to Rene Lalique. It is inscribed by the artist…. “mon ami Lalique”….. my friend Lalique. The style of this 1899 watercolor is quintessential Art Nouveau, with the woman in profile having hair of seaweed and shells. What a spectacular lot; a wonderful period item that would add biographical, historical, and scholarly depth to any serious RLalique collection. And it’s a great looking watercolor. NOT Rlalique, but still Rene Lalique. What the heck, we listed it in our RLalique at Auction Section.
A great day here at RLalique.com. Today we launch two new sections adding major new features for the entire RLalique community. First, the RLalique Police! The purpose of this section is to give users of our site a place to tell the community about suspicious RLalique items in online auctions, and to give everyone a chance to talk about the items, make comments and observations, and share their knowledge about the actual identity of the suspicious items. There are two parts to this new feature; the RLalique Police Blog Thread that is the place where you can leave a comment pointing to a suspicious listing, or comment on previous listings reported by other users. We will copy those listings to the new RLalique Police Section, which will simply have a list of suspicious RLalique items at auction reported by users in the RLalique Police Blog Thread. The point of the section is to sort out the actual suspicious listings from the blog comments for easy and fast reference by users concerned about particular items online that they might be considering. The RLalique Police Blog Thread is just below this announcement, and that thread is linked from the RLalique Police Section. This has been our most requested feature since the inception of RLalique.com and we have high hopes for users to have a chance to contribute to the greater pool of information for the entire RLalique community through the new RLalique Police Blog Thread and RLalique Police Section.
The second new feature is the RLalique Wanted Section, where users can list specific RLalique items they are looking to add to their collections. This should provide a way for active collectors to get the word out about items they want to find, and it’s also a great way for collectors that have a matching piece, to have a chance to make a sale to someone they know is looking for the item they have, at a reasonable commission rate, and where both parties’ identify is kept confidential. A Win-Win-Win situation.
Please take a minute to check out our new features. We hope you will participate in listing any RLalique items you are seriously looking for in the RLalique Wanted Section, and that you will take the time to point out suspicious RLalique online auction listings, and share whatever knowledge you have about these items as they appear.
Finally, we’ve added another row of picture links near the bottom of our Home Page, to link these two new sections directly from the graphics area of the Home Page. And we’ve added these additional links to all of the navigation bars throughout RLalique.com. We pride ourselves on the ease of use of RLalique.com, and we hope you find these additions and improvements to your liking. As we might have mentioned before, we know your time is valuable, and we appreciate the time you spend here with us at RLalique.com. We are working hard to ensure that your time is well spent and we appreciate any and every contribution you are willing to make to help improve the overall RLalique community.
This is our running thread on Suspicious RLalique Online Auctions brought to our attention by readers of RLalique.com. This is THE PLACE to post suspicious online listings by leaving a comment to this post. This thread is for items that are NOT RLalique, and we include in this thread online RLalique auctions where there is no actual RLalique item (the stolen photo auctions). We started this thread in response to reader requests. To submit a suspicious item, or comment about an item already listed in this thread, leave your comment here. We welcome comments on items that have already been posted here, concerning all the various subjects surrounding a fake listing; from the actual identify of the item, to any patterns of deception or things that can be learned from a specific listing. If an item is a real RLalique item, and you have concerns about condition or quality, this is not the place to comment. For help with real RLalique items, please check out our RLalique Consulting Services Section. Two final notes: First, you have to register to comment, by clicking the register link on the sidebar of any blog page. Your name and email address (the two main things to register) do not appear in your comments when they are published. By taking the time to identify fake RLalique appearing in online auctions, and sharing your knowledge with the greater RLalique community, you help to strengthen the entire RLalique collecting field, and you may save a fellow enthusiast from a big headache. Finally, one common sense observation from our standpoint. Not all sellers of a suspicious item are bad people. For example, someone buys an item at an estate sale or antique shop, thinking it’s a great RLalique bargain, then goes home and lists it in an online auction, not knowing the facts. That’s a different story than the seller that adds an RLalique signature to a non RLalique piece to try and increase the value, or that knowingly passes along a fake. It’s often hard or impossible to know or guess at the truth of each circumstance. What matters most is the fact of the item; whether it’s RLalique or not, and for you as a collector to be as educated as possible to know the difference between the good, the bad, and the ugly. We look forward to your contributions.
Our 2nd listing has appeared on Ebay. It’s a good Rene Lalique Bluets Vase, circa 1914. The vase has a starting price well below half of recent sales prices of the same model vase, and no reserve. Our Ebay User I.D, is RLaliqueSales. We’ve posted the listing in the RLalique at Auction Section, and the Ebay Item Number is 320308942233. You can also check out our RLalique.com Ebay About Me Page (well, About US really)!
Article number 5 has appeared in the great series on bid rigging and collusion at auctions running in the Maine Antiques Digest as part of their series on Auction Law and Ethics written by a lawyer familiar with auctions and the law. We have been reprinting the articles in this series here at RLalique.com with the permission of the author and the assistance of the Maine Antique Digest so that they will be available directly on our website for our fellow RLalique enthusiasts. All articles in this Bid Rigging Series are linked in our Articles of Interest page here at RLalique.com. This page can also be accessed from the link in our Navigation Section on the right hand side of any RLalique Blog page. You can also directly access the latest article in the series, the 5th article, by clicking on the title – Auction Law and Ethics: The $64,000 Question. We agree with the author that when bidders collude, it is a serious problem for all auction participants, and that all bidders at auctions should be aware of the laws about bid rigging and collusion. We highly recommend these articles to you and welcome your comments.
Here is a link to the Blog of Stephen Harrison, the Curator of Decorative Art and Design at the Cleveland Museum of Art. The museum is putting on a great Exhibition which opens October 19th on the works of Rene Lalique, Tiffany, and Faberge. The Exhibit is titled: Artistic Luxury: Fabergé, Tiffany, Lalique. It focuses on the early 1900’s work of the three named artists. Steve has a blog which contains some great tidbits of info, lots of photos, and which also links to a series of short videos on the work involved in setting up the Exhibition. Some great RLalique stuff throughout. More information about the Exhibition is contained in an RLalique.Com Blog Post We Did The First Week of August when we were just getting started. This info is well worth checking out for all admirers of Rene Lalique (and those other two guys that are also represented at the Exhibition), though suffering thru the short intro ad to each of the videos is not pleasant :).
And for more information, you can find out about all the exhibition resources at RLalique.com by visiting the Lalique Exhibitions section of the Rene Lalique Biography.
For those Marlon Brando fans out there, the appearance of the seldom seen R. Lalique Du Barry box coming up at auction on November 19th, and which is referred to in certain esoteric circles as “The Godfather Box”, brings back fond memories of what was perhaps Brando’s greatest modern movie role. The box appeared in the original Godfather Movie released in 1972 (was it that long ago – 48 years as of 2020?) in a bit of a cameo appearance. A Du Barry is coming up for sale at Kodner Galleries in Florida. Most times you see this box with the cover missing (go figure!), but this one is apparently complete. Next time you see the original movie, watch for it! And when you contact Kodner Galleries, don’t forget to tell them you saw this great R Lalique box here, at RLalique.com. And for all the information we have about the Du Barry Box including many sale examples plus a link to the movie clip showing the box with Brando, see the Du Barry Box Model Page in the Rene Lalique Catalogue.
Significant restoration and a 1 feedback seller, but rare has hen’s teeth, and hard to find in any condition. The R Lalique Perfume People (sorry about the alliteration, couldn’t resist, but at least we didn’t single out the Particularly Passionate ones) and R Lalique collectors of all stripes might find it worth checking into. Something tells us that this may not be the first ride at the rodeo for this bottle, but no way to know without some investigation. And either way, a cool and hard to get, early R Lalique design. The Ebay Item Number is 120333834682.
Christies South Kensington’s Semi-Annual Sale of the works of the great Rene Lalique, posted a very respectable sale total of £318,450 including buyer’s premium. The sale had a catalogued 126 lots, but a couple were withdrawn and not offered. A total of 90 lots sold, for a respectable take up rate of 71%, which would be bit higher if the withdrawals were removed from consideration. High seller was of course the fresh to market R Lalique 1929 Cire Perdue Vase Feuilles Fougeres, CP551, which appears in the R Lalique Catalogue Raisonne only with information that it exists, and without even a drawing, let alone a picture. A photo of this vase has graced our home page for the better part of the past month. Measuring around 4.75 inches high (slightly smaller than a Rampillon Vase), this unique vase had a high relief design, and was in nearly original condition. The buyer was a London dealer in the room, thought by some observers to be acting on behalf of another dealer that wished to remain anonymous (intrigue). Big question – Who will step up to tell Christie’s “I saw it at RLalique.com”? These concerns aside, it sold for £32,450 including the buyer’s premium, against an estimate of £20,000 to £30,000.
The Georges Clairin Watercolor, approximately 12″ by 9″, inscribed with the artist’s name and the dedication “a mon ami Lalique” (to my friend Lalique), and discussed in a previous post in this R Lalique Blog, sold at Sotheby’s London today, November 12th, for £11,000 plus 25% buyer’s premium of £2750 for a total price of £13,750, or roughly $21,000 at today’s exchange rates, all against an estimate of £6,000 to £8,000. A strong result for a great looking art nouveau watercolor with an extremely close tie to the great Rene Lalique. Hopefully, the buyer let ’em know that they saw it here, at RLalique.com!
Bonhams New Bond Street in London featured 51 lots of R Lalique as the lead items up for auction in their Design 1860-1945 Sale today, November 12th. A respectable mixed offering of mainly middle market models, 40 of the lots sold for a take up rate of near 80%. While our favorite lot here at RLalique.com was a wonderful R Lalique Deux Figurines Silvered 1913 Hand Mirror selling in the original fitted case and which made £2160 including premium, there are a couple of high sellers in the range of over ten times that result. A decent looking opalescent R Lalique Bacchantes Vase on original stand made £26,400 including premium, but was nosed out as the top lot by a very attractive birds eye maple R Lalique 1914 Figurines coffret, featuring 5 glass panels and being around a foot long, which made £27,600 including the premium. If we figured it right, the total was £116,832 for all the R Lalique including the premium.
Another great Ebay lot – an RLalique Masques Decanter. Ebay item 360102807585 – Sans stopper, but cheap as chips at 162 AUS as we write this….. Maybe a great chance to pick up a Rene Lalique Decanter with a classic and popular design at a reasonable price. This is one of the popular Lalique Decanters!
A great looking RLalique Ronsard Opalescent Vase appeared out of Oklahoma on Ebay this morning. $1750, no reserve, and the ad states no damage. Lots of photos from a high volume Power Seller. Seems like it might be worth checking out before it disappears.
This is the place for readers and users comments:
A long time collector has had this piece for a long time…makes sense.
The bottle was made by the H. Saumont Glassworks in the late 1920’s.
Our 2nd listing has appeared on Ebay. It’s a good Rene Lalique Bluets Vase, circa 1914. The vase has a starting price well below half of recent sales prices of the same model vase, and no reserve. Our Ebay User I.D, is RLaliqueSales. We’ve posted the listing in the 
