At least, that was the opinion of the UK trade newspaper Antiques Trade Gazette when it reported on the sale of a hitherto unrecorded masterwork by Armand-Albert Rateau, who is considered to be the one of the most exclusive interior designers of the 1920s.
The item in question is a marble and bronze dressing table that was offered at an Italian auction as part of the collection ‘of a noble Piedmontese family’, who had owned the table since the 1960s.
Described by Roland Arkell in the ATG as combining elements of two well-known models produced for key clients in 1920-21, the table base – of black and white marble, gilt bronze and ivorine – follows a design created by Rateau for the French couturier Jeanne Lanvin, while the top – a gilt bronze and glass mirror superstructure with stylised avian supports – was originally made for the bathroom of the Duchess of Alba’s palace in Madrid.
And the reason it might have been a bargain, even with a price tag of $786,000? Well in December 2022, Sotheby’s New York sold another version of the same model, from the collection of American businessman Ronald Perelman, for $5m. A total of four versions of the dressing table are known, with one – included by Rateau in his display at the groundbreaking 1925 Paris Exposition – being bought by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York in that same year. The two others, which are patinated rather than gilt bronze, have sold at auction for $3.05m (Christie’s Paris, June 2006) and $3.36m (Christie’s New York, 2024).
Although the auction cataloguer seems to have been oblivious to the gem in their midst, online images of the dressing table included an impressed signature and serial number that were enough for 12 phone bidders to enter the contest, with collectors from France, Italy, Germany, the UK and the USA competing against online bidders for what may actually have been the aforesaid bargain.
Monsieur Rateau, whilst a designer who loved the look of layered luxe, was himself a rather portly man who peered out from behind his pince-nez and liked to be photographed in his workshop or at work behind his desk rather than with his clientele, who were exclusively high society and for whom money was absolutely no object. His designs included Byzantine domes, poolside furniture upholstered with ocelot fur, Romanesque bathtubs and bathroom fittings styled as blossoms and birds. In the 1920s he employed more than 200 skilled artisans to create his highly imaginative pieces, until the stockmarket crash and Great Depression all but destroyed his business. He died in 1938 at the age of 55.
