Tiffany Chair Crowns Decor Auction

New Orleans Auction Galleries is holding its next auction on September 11 and 12 with bidding through Live Auctioneers. The two-day sale features over 900 lots of furniture, fine arts, Asian porcelain, jewelry, silver, glass, books and more. Among the highlights is the important L. C. Tiffany Walnut Roundabout Chair shown at right. Louis Comfort Tiffany was famous for his work in glass but he also designed textiles, furnishings, basically anything for the interior of a home.

The chair, which is dated to circa 1879-1890, is beautifully ornamented. Each stile is capped by a finely carved finial depicting a bear grasping a pumpkin, each finial differently ornamented, centered by an oak- and acorn-carved panel, the arms on bobbin-turned supports, the seat rail adorned with brass studs, raised on square legs with double-knuckled paw feet on glass balls. This striking chair is part of a very small group of seating furniture, armchairs and sidechairs in this form have occasionally surfaced.

The auction listing says that Louis Comfort Tiffany was involved in several furniture and decorating enterprises from 1879 through the following decade, including Associated Artists, active 1879-1883, Tiffany and DeForest, active 1880-1883, and L. C. Tiffany and Company which was created to manufacture furniture and went bankrupt in 1885 while executing the Lyceum Theatre commission in New York. This piece is estimated to sell for $30,000 to $50,000.