Tiffany Garden Museum Contents Sold

Alice Kaufman | November 17th, 2012

A Tiffany Studios parakeet and goldfish bowl tea screen sold for $324,500, which was the auction day’s highest price. Michaan called the screen “very special, unique, a small version of a famous Tiffany window.” It is 8" tall including its 18k gold frame and was estimated at $400,000/600,000.

The first six-figure sale of the day was this Tiffany Studios table lamp with some elements of two patterns, Venetian and Ninth Century. It sold to a telephone bidder for $112,100 (est. $75,000/90,000). Auctioneer Scott Bradley advised the bidder to “be strong.”

This Tiffany Studios 28¼" diameter Alamander chandelier sold to director Francis Ford Coppola, who was at the auction but left shortly after this purchase. It sold for $212,400 (est. $200,000/250,000). At Sotheby’s in New York City on November 7, 1992, it had sold for $44,000.

Michaan’s Auctions, Alameda, California

Photos courtesy Michaan’s

Allen Michaan, president of Michaan’s Auctions in Alameda, California, has been collecting Tiffany material for 35 years. Naturally when his friend and Tiffany expert Alastair Duncan told him that the contents of the Tiffany Garden Museum in Japan—lamps, vases, panels, paintings, and much more—were available for purchase, he jumped at the chance. “I was on the next plane,” Michaan told M.A.D.

Michaan knew the collection. In fact, several of the museum’s pieces had been purchased at Michaan’s. In 1992, with Duncan’s guidance, museum owner Takeo Horiuchi started collecting all things Tiffany and many things Art Nouveau. Horiuchi and Duncan bought at auction as well as from private collections. But after the 2011 earthquake in Japan, to quote the catalog’s dedication, “out of concern and love” Horiuchi decided to sell the contents of his museum and allow the collection “to leave the shores of Japan for a safer home elsewhere.”

“I felt this was a great opportunity,” Michaan said. “Through Alastair’s help, I felt I could swoop in and do the deal.” Michaan put together the financing so that he and his group could purchase the entire museum. “We wouldn’t have gotten it otherwise. The New York auction houses were trying to get it.”

Michaan said that along with Tiffany objects, a major portion of the museum material is French Art Nouveau “masterpieces” that Michaan’s is selling at Sotheby’s in Paris on February 16. (“The venue absolutely had to be Paris,” he said.)

At the November 17, 2012, auction in Alameda, Michaan said that glassware (“vases and small luxury glass pieces”) did the best as a category. “The big lamps didn’t sell, but they will.”

That includes lot 100, a Tiffany Studios Cobweb table lamp that had eight pages of detailed illustrations in the catalog as well as being featured on both covers. The catalog listed the estimate as “upon request,” and at the auction the reserve price was not met when the bidding stopped at $3,250,000. “I am talking to people,” Michaan said after the auction. “This is one of the most important Tiffany lamps out there. I won’t discount the price.”

The auction room and parking lot were full. It was rumored that Michaan’s had requests from 14 private plane owners asking if they could land at the former Naval Air Station adjacent to the auction house. (The answer was no.) Among the people who traveled to the auction was Frank Maraschiello, director of 20th-century decorative arts at Bonhams in New York City. Why? “It’s a legendary collection, and I sold many of these pieces to Mr. Horiuchi when I was at Sotheby’s. He was a good client.” Maraschiello characterized the people attending the auction as “a good representation of both the collectors’ and dealers’ worlds.”

Was the auction a success? “Yes,” Allen Michaan answered. Including after-auction sales, as of December 4, 2012, sales totaled more than $4 million, the auction house’s “high water mark, more than twice as much as our best sale before this. No one sells one hundred percent. We had a good sell-through rate. The major lamps did not sell, but they will.” The follow-up auction is scheduled for May 11, when material new to Michaan’s and some of the Tiffany material that did not sell will be offered. And since the November sale, Michaan added, “people have been calling us with consignments of Tiffany and more.”

All prices in the captions include the buyer’s premium. For more information, contact Michaan’s Auctions at (800) 380-9822 or (www.michaans.com).

This Tiffany Studios turtleback tile clock set in bronze sold for $76,700 (est. $40,000/60,000) to a bidder in the room.

Beach Scene, Sea Bright, New Jersey, a 31" x 55" oil signed “Louis C. Tiffany” and dated 1919, sold to a floor bidder for $165,200 (est. $80,000/100,000).