I'm goggle-eyed at the amount paid for a chair once owned by Yves St. Laurent.
The Yves Saint Laurent sale of the century ended yesterday after netting an outrageous $484 million in winning bids - including $28.3 million for an ugly, 90-year-old armchair crafted by famed Irish designer Eileen Gray.Even auctioneers at the Paris Christie's event were knocked on their seats when a paddle-wielding couple paid a king's ransom for the throne.
"It was a remarkably strong piece, but what it went for was beyond our wildest imagination," Christie's VP and decorative-design expert Carina Villinger told The Post yesterday.
Asked why anyone would spend so much for one piece of furniture, Villinger admitted her own dad was floored by the arm-and-a-leg bid.
"My dad asked me the same thing, [and said] 'I'd rather have the money!' " Villinger quipped.
The chair - dubbed "The Dragons" - sold for more than seven times its pre-auction estimate of $3.8 million.
I'm just stunned. Let me spell that out in words. Twenty-eight point three million dollars? For a chair??? Dammit, at that price I'd want the chair to have some really serious, heavyweight historical value - like that in which Anne Boleyn last sat before she was beheaded, or one Boudicca might have used to make her chariot more comfortable, or a chaise-longue used by Cleopatra to seduce Julius Caesar!
Recession? What recession?
Peter
Or the beanbag chair where I like to sit naked, eating Cheetos and waiting patiently for my muse...
ReplyDeleteGosh. It's, uh. Well, my puppies could make a hash of that in minutes flat.
ReplyDeleteI'd give them 20 bucks and possibly a dozen beer, but 28.3 million? I wonder if the two rich fools were mugged on the way out, they obviously have money to burn. At that, they probably pay someone else to burn it for them.
ReplyDeleteJim