Milano – New York 2-0

Thursday night in Cambi’s Auction House halls at Palazzo Serbelloni, the Milanese headquarters, took place the great success of Murano glass with an auction that has beaten even the most optimistic expectations. The auction room was filled with Milanese collectors and some of the biggest international dealers of Italian ‘900 in collecting that contended the artworks until the last bid.

The catalogue, rich in carefully chosen artworks by the expert in charge Marco Arosio, included works produced by the Murano kilns between 1890 and 1990. The auction began in the best way an early ‘900 Hans Stotenberg Lerche vase sold for € 57.500.00, a rare artist who didn’t appear on the market since 1999. Soon after, the fever went up with the gavel stopping at € 200.000 for the cover vase, another masterpiece by Vittorio Zecchin murrino glass ( 1878-1947 ).
But it was with the artworks of Carlo Scarpa, coming out in the ’30 and ’40 from Cappellin e Venini kilns, that the auction reached its peak with two fine vases produced in Wires technique, sold for € 143.750 and € 106.250. Everything was going well when the auction has experienced yet another overwelming outburst, outperforming the results of a Sotheby’s auction featuring a collection of glasses that took place at Sotheby’s New York in June 7th, thus proclaiming Milan as the best place on the market.

A vase with murrine checkers by Paolo Venini, similar to the one on the cover of New York, reached € 172.800 on an estimation between € 15,000 and € 20,000, and another, even more rare vase with polychrome decoration mosaic pipes also by Venini, has reached a staggering € 250.000, the highest sale ever reached by a vase in Murano glass in Italy, six times the value of a similar one sold on the American market.

Excellent sales were also reached for Dino Martens (1894-1970) with the beautiful vase Eldorado ( € 231.250 ) and some rare pieces of Thomas Stearns ( 1936-2006 ) as the Cappello del Doge, perhaps the most interesting vase ever produced in the 60s in Italy, for € 87,500.

In the afternoon there was a more quiet auction held in the same rooms for a selection of Decorative Arts of the ‘900 with good results: a rare Lenci 1929 by Giuseppe Porcheddu sold for € 16,000, a fine gouache of Erté cover ( 1892-1990) for € 7.500 and a French Art Nouveau table with rare bronzes for € 12.288.

Genoa, 21st June 2016