CARLO BUGATTI. A Rare Pewter, Copper, and Painted Parchment Inlaid Walnut Firescreen, circa 1900. 37 x 39 x 12 inches (94.0 ...

Description

CARLO BUGATTI
A Rare Pewter, Copper, and Painted Parchment Inlaid Walnut Firescreen, circa 1900
37 x 39 x 12 inches (94.0 x 99.1 x 30.5 cm)

PROVENANCE:
Designed for the bedroom of Cyril Flower, Lord Battersea, London.

EXHIBITED:
Turin, 1902.

LITERATURE:
Cf. P. Dejean, Bugatti: Carlo, Rembrandt, Ettore, Jean, New York, 1982, p. 32;
B. Lamarche-Vadel, Bugatti: Les Meubles, Les Sculptures, Les Autos, Paris, 1995, p. 30 (for a period image of this firescreen shown in-situ in the bedroom of British aristocrat Lord Battersea ca. 1900);
R. Bossaglia, I Bugatti, Milan, 1997, p. 34;
H.H. Hawley, et al., exh. cat., Bugatti, Cleveland, 1999, p. 17;
M. Massé, Carlo Bugatti au Musée d'Orsay, Paris, 2001, p. 90;
H. Sturm, Ausgefallene Schonheit: Carlo Bugatti, Exotismus, Entwurfe des Diversen, Frankfurt, 2005, p. 58;
A. Dunsmore, Bugatti: Carlo, Ettore, Rembrandt, Jean, Mulgrave, Victoria, 2009, p. 13.

This important and rare firescreen was included in one of Carlo Bugatti's most elaborate and ambitious private design commissions. The present lot was part of the orientalist bedroom furnishings for British aristocrat and patron, Lord Battersea. This commission marked the crescendo of his "exotic" phase, and the firescreen itself looks forward to his avant-garde sculptural style that was the toast of the Turin exposition in 1902.

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