AN IMPORTANT SILVER TEA AND COFFEE SERVICE “LIBELLULES”, CIRCA 1907
Comprising a coffee pot, a tea pot, a creamer and sugar bowl, with tray
Each item signed Bugatti, with foundry mark A. Hébrard Paris, silversmith and French
Minerva marks
The tray: 89 cm. long
25 cm. wide
Exhibition
Galerie A.-A. Hébrard, 8, rue Royale, Paris, 2-25 December 1907
Salon d’Automne, 1909
Salon de la Société des Artistes Décorateurs, 1910
Bugatti, 18 July-19 September 1999, The Cleveland Museum of Art, USA, ill. p. 25, fig.
36 and under n. 38 in the exhibition catalogue
ReConnaître Carlo Bugatti, Musée d’Orsay, Paris, 10 April-15 July 2001, n. 76 in the
exhibition catalogue, ill. p. 61
Bibliography
L’Art Décoratif, October 1909, the coffee pot ill p. 126, the other items p. 127
P. Dejean, Bugatti, Editions du Regard, Paris 1981, p. 110
Art et Décoration, April 1910, the sugar bowl and creamer ill. p. 132
L’Estampille – L’Objet d’Art, n. 358, May 2001, ill. p. 51
Victor Arwas, Art Nouveau – The French Aesthetic, Andreas Papadakis publisher, 2002,
ill. p. 587
The widow of a South African magnate who had made his fortune in the Transvaal gold mines, Anna Blake settled in Paris in 1902 together with her two children. She began to accumulate works by the most important modern designers such as René Lalique, Carlo Bugatti and Lucien Gaillard.
Fascinated by the work of Carlo Bugatti, Anna Blake commissioned a large portion of the designer’s limited silver output. She soon became one of his best clients, and around 1907 commissioned a silver tea and coffee service. Receiving drawings for three different designs, and unable to make a selection, Blake commissionedall three examples the finest example decorated with dragonflies that we will have the honour to offer at Design Miami/ Basel 2017. Prolific as he was as a furniture designer and maker, Carlo Bugatti’s known silverware number only a handful of objects. The “Dragonfly” service is a unique piece that was already exhibited at the Musée d’Orsay, Paris, and The Cleveland Museum, Ohio.
Epitomizing Carlo Bugatti’s flights into his exotic imagination, it reflects the artist’s fascination with nature that characterized the end of the 19th century and the early 20th century.
