LUTYENS AT AUCTION

A round- up of the high prices Lutyens’ pieces have reached in the salesroom

The highest price paid for a Lutyens piece was on 9th November 2000 at Christie’s King Street. A pair of opalescent glass hanging shades that he designed around 1925 for Gledstone Hall went under the hammer for £44,650.

Prices have remained consistent in the years since. On 3rd November 2015, Christie’s sold a pair of upholstered mahogany ‘ Napoleon’ chairs, designed in 1919, for £11,250, a figure that was almost twice the lower estimate. While on 27th April 2017, another Gledstone Hall ceiling light, the six-beaded, coloured- glass and silver- plated brass ‘ Halo’, fetched £28,750 at an auction at Phillips London.

‘Original Lutyens pieces are a good investment,’ says Marcus McDonald, international specialist at Phillips London, Hong Kong and New York. ‘ He didn’t sign his pieces so it’s rare to have firm attribution, but if you do find an example with good provenance that can be traced back to an original interior, it is likely to hold – or even increase – its value. The high price the ‘ Halo’ achieved at our recent sale will certainly be good for the market.’

ABOVE FROM LEFT This pair of opalescent glass hanging shades that sold at Christie’s in 2000 for £ 44,650, still holds the auction record for an Edwin Lutyens product; a ‘Halo’ light that Lutyens designed speci cally for Gledstone Hall went for £ 28,750 at Phillips London earlier this year BELOW A pair of Lutyens’ distinctive asymmetric ‘Napoleon’ chairs fetched £11,250 at Christie’s in 2015