Macklowe Gallery Decorative Arts

Alphonse Adolphe Lamarre’s ceramic glazing effect, known as the zhegu ban or “partridge feather” phenomenon, demonstrates his fascination with natural textures and organic surface ef...

A pair of French "Byzantine Heads" lithographs by Alphonse Mucha. The mastery evident in creating two archetypes of the female form against a decorative background confirms Mucha's a...

Argy-Rousseau's near-unique ability to gracefully soften the starkness of Art Deco design without ever sacrificing the strength of the design is on full display in this remarkable, p...

Argy-Rousseau's near-unique ability to gracefully soften the starkness of Art Deco design without ever sacrificing the strength of the design is on full display in this remarkable, p...

This four-sided hanging Moorish lantern features red turtleback glass tiles set within intricate coiled wire filigree—a technique derived from ancient Greco-Roman jewelry. Its bold pyramidal form enhances the design’s exotic character. Tiffany’s turtleback lanterns were among his earliest lighting innovations, appearing in photographs as early as the 1880s. Designed to hang from ceilings at staggered heights, these lanterns created a dynamic interplay of form and light. Their varied shapes and textures were intended to evoke the illuminated ceilings of a mosque, where centuries of accumulated oil lamps and polycandela formed a dazzling, mismatched constellation of lights. Item #: YL-22197 Artist: Tiffany Studios New York Country: United States Circa: 1900 Dimensions: 42" height, 5.25" width, 5.25" depth. Materials: Favrile Glass, Bronze Literature: For an illustration of this rare model, see Alastair Duncan, Tiffany Lamps and Metalware: An Illustrated Reference to Over 2,000 Models, New Edition, pg. 326, fig. 1308. "Da Lee Anderson, Il Collezionista," in Casa Vogue, June 1985, no. 64, pgs. 172-5. Macklowe Gallery Curator's Notes: This lantern was commissioned by Charlotte Doremus Pierson Garrett Bellairs (1872–1939) who was briefly married Horatio Garrett, one of three Garrett sons raised at Evergreen—a 48-room Gilded Age mansion built by a wealthy railroad and banking family. During their engagement, Horatio’s mother, Alice, began construction on “Evergreen Junior,” a nearby residence intended for the couple. But Horatio died of cancer in 1896 at age 23, and Charlotte never lived there. She remained at Evergreen through at least 1900, according to census records. The Garretts were early patrons of Louis Comfort Tiffany, and Evergreen remains filled with custom commissions dating back to the 1880s. Many, including this lantern, reflect Tiffany’s Moorish...

This exquisite Zsolnay jardiniere features a pair of golden pheasants with richly striated plumage in shimmering shades of gold, green, blue, and magenta. As lifelong mates, golden p...

This vide-poche depicts a whelk (Buccin) beside a strand of fucus, the brown algae traditionally harvested along the Breton coast. Such gathering was historically undertaken by goémo...

This exquisite pâte de verre sculpture by Amalric Walter captures an amber-hued cockatiel poised with quiet alertness upon a rocky outcrop, its form subtly animated by the interplay ...

This carved mahogany and marquetry table by Émile Gallé features a cherry blossom–shaped top, inlaid with blossoming boughs and a violin. The floral imagery draws on the Yoshino cher...

This exquisite two-tiered Japonist table by Émile Gallé features marquetry that juxtaposes a planar rendering of an arrowhead flower with a fully articulated botanical view of the pl...

The Seasons (Les Saisons) by Alphonse Mucha is among the most celebrated expressions of Art Nouveau printmaking: a suite of four poetic lithographs—Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Winter—each allegory embodied by an idealized female figure adorned with the flora and fauna of their eponymous season. Spring (Les Printemps) Spring emerges as an ethereal, blonde sylph—an air elemental—standing before a haze of apple blossoms. She is framed by a delicate wreath of blooming dogwood, a motif Mucha studied from life. She fashions a lyre-like instrument from a fresh green branch, her own flowing hair forming its strings, evoking the poetic ideal of the Aeolian harp—an instrument played not by human hands but by the wind itself. This association aligns her with Romantic notions of nature as an animating force, written by contemporaneous poets such as Samuel Taylor Coleridge. At her feet, songbirds—including the ortolan bunting, long associated in French culture with innocence, and the exotic red-billed leiothrix, prized for its melodious song—gather to animate the composition with sound. The floral border of her garment, composed of narcissi, asters, dianthus, and cuckoo flowers, reinforces the sense of the abundance that defines the season. Summer (L’Été) Summer is rendered in languid repose, seated beside a reflective pool, her body slackened by the heat. Crowned with vivid red poppies—flowers of both sleep and sensuality—she dips her feet into cool water, seeking relief from the oppressive warmth. Ivy curls around her form, her translucent white drapery appears to slip from her shoulders, heightening the sense of languor. Unlike the airiness of Spring, Summer is grounded in the body, evoking the sensuous, almost narcotic stillness of a long, sun-drenched afternoon. Autumn (L’Automne) Autumn is richly adorned, her deep auburn hair echoing the tones of fallen leaves that surround her. She turns her gaze not outward, but toward the ripe grapes she holds—a symbol of harvest and abundance. A crown of chrysanthemums, rendered in white and blue, rests upon her head, a flower closely associated with Mucha himself, who was known—according to his son Jiří Mucha—to wear one in his buttonhole. Her costume is elaborately detailed with filigree disk brooches inspired by the stage jewelry of Sarah Bernhardt, particularly in her role as Theodora. These jewelry designs by Mucha drew on historical sources ranging from Byzantine mosaics studied in Ravenna to the earlier Merovingian traditions of Frankish and Lombardic women, who wore paired brooches...

This pair of bookends by Henri Mercie and Amalric Walter presents two sea lions poised atop rocky outcrops, their forms modeled with a quiet naturalism that emphasizes both mass and ...