R. Louis Bofferding Decorative and Fine Art

This late 1930s Venini chandelier has two rings of curved-glass elements suspended from a brass frame. It appears to glow magically from within because the glass elements are infuse...

Remie Lohse was born in Puerto Rico, studied painting in Denmark, and settled in New York in 1928, where he became a professional photographer. In the 1930s he was a freelancer who specialized in advertising and magazine features, and shot covers for Vogue. If he often focused on the high life, seen in this couple stepping out on the town, he also shot humble subjects. He was more interested in his art than a particular milieu, and many of his photographs are little masterpieces. His contemporary Gilbert Seldes, the noted Vanity Fair media critic and “public intellectual” (not to mention father of actress Marian Seldes), featured Lohse in his 1934 book 'This is New York, The First Modern Photographic Book of New York.' In 1939 Lohse came out with his own book titled 'The Miniature Camera in Professional Hands.' Our photograph was one of three shot by Lohse for a 1934 Vogue article titled “High Spots and Low Music." If the photograph (image size 4 1/4" x 6") show a couple making the nocturnal rounds of Manhattan restaurants, bars, and jazz clubs, the story itself also covers the daytime meeting places of the ladies who lunch. The twist is that Lohse’s model was the author herself, Elena Mumm Thornton, and her husband James Worth...

This 1930s Italian bench is so over-scaled, and monumental in appearance, that it seems to have been made for the large room it was destined, rather than the comfort of a typical sitter. As such, it would function equally well as a low side table or a high cocktail table. We’ll allow the buyer to determine its use. The designer was Pierluigi Colli, and the fabricator Martinotti, the Turin furniture and interior decorating firm that was established in 1831, and exhibited at the 1876 Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition and the 1904 St Louis World’s Fair. Colli’s family owned a textile company that supplied Martinotti with upholstery fabrics, suggesting nepotism had something to do with his being hired as the firm's director in 1926. Nevertheless, he proved himself worthy as a designer and a businessman. Having studied in Paris at the Ecole des Arts Decoratifs, he befriended leading French designers, and arranged for Martinotti to retail Lalique glass and Jean Perzel lighting. In addition, the quality of their work, and Colli’s dedication to the modern design movement, prompted Carlo Mollino, Gio Ponti, and Gino Levi-Montalcini, among others, to have Martinotti fabricate some of their furniture. Colli’s claim to fame, however, is his own work as a designer, and his ability to master the vocabularies of every trend from Art Deco to midcentury modern. During the Great Depression, when nearly every nation floundered economically, fascist Italy...

These earthbound chairs appear to be weightless. Such is the illusion that the designer René Prou was able to create in 1930s Paris with the aid of a highly-skilled upholsterer. Befo...

The January 1935 issue of Plaisir de France featured two dining tables by Jansen. The editors saw fit to present the same photograph of one of the two once again in the book Decoration de France, a 1949 compilation of articles and images previously published in the magazine. This photograph shows the table before an antique Chinese screen, extravagantly set with Lalique glass, and a fantastical Misia...

This 1930s French chandelier adapts an Ancien Regime form to Cafe Society taste. The arms are3 trimmed with cut-glass arabesques, the frame is steel rath...

A ram lowers its horns in a face off with a barking dog that rises on its haunches. An ox turns its head to watch the row. An annoyed ewe glances over its shoulder, but the two behin...

Véronese was established in 1931 by Marcel Barbier. The firm was unique in having a design office in Paris and a glasswork on Murano. They developed a product line of clear translucent glass that was promoted through extensive advertising, and sold from striking modern showrooms in Paris and Nice. Their master glassblower was Giovanni Veronese, but the name was probably meant to evoke the 17th century Venetian painter Paolo Veronese, who depicted glassware and other luxury goods. Launched during the Depression, Véronese devised a lean business model. Rather than having an in-house art director they commissioned designs from independent architects, like Marcel Roux...

An 18th century chaise percée, from the bathroom of Baron Max Fould-Springer, Palais Abbatial de Royaumont and by descent his sister Baroness Elie (Lilia...

The French designer Jean-Boris Lacroix was best known in the 1930s, as he is today, as a designer of lighting fixtures. Our lamp consists of a circle, a sphere, and a cylinder that t...

Emilio Terry -- architect, interior, and furniture designer -- was the inventor and sole-practitioner of what was drolly referred to as his “Louis XVII style...

This large Art Deco table is attributed to the Austrian born New York designer Eugene Schoen. The mahogany carcass is veneered in Macassar, and surfaced with a sheet of black opaline...

These over-scaled chairs were said to have been designed by Chicago architect Sam Marx, but they were probably made by William Quigley, whose workshop ...

A translucent alabaster lamp of the same model was featured in the July 1938 issue of Domus magazine, which was established and edited by Gio Ponti. They were made in the Volterra wo...

This photograph by George Platt Lynes is unusual for having three exposures of the Russian princess Natalie Paley, the celebrated beauty, and the wife...

This pair of walnut-veneered, black marble and brass neoclassical pedestals bear a striking resemblance to those that appeared in the rooms decorated in by Eleanor Brown of McMillen ...

This English 1930s mirror-framed dressing table mirror could also serve as a frame for a photograph. On the cresting are three acid-etched plumes...

In the 1920s Gio Ponti, who defined 20th century Italian design, was the art director of Richard-Ginori, a venerable porcelain company established in the 18th century. When Ponti moved on in 1930, his protégé Giovanni Gariboldi, who also designed furniture and interiors, filled the vacated position. It would seem that Gariboldi found his model for these shell-shaped dishes in nature, but this is not the case. Rather, he channeled the essence of “shellness," and endowed his design with the faux verisimilitude of delicate ribbing along the scalloped edge. Yet he had them glazed in improbable candy-like pastel colors of pink, yellow, and blue. Originally used principally as ashtrays, no doubt, they could also be put to use as serving dishes for nuts and candies, or as decorative tabletop objects...

Around 1930 Gio Ponti gave Paolo Venini some sketches for glass obelisks. Shortly thereafter Carlo Scarpa designed for Venini a torqued obelisk in transparent diamante glass -- so na...

This haunting image by Eugene Berman was painted on a sheet of paper cut in the shape of a heart, mounted to a paint-speckled ground, encircled with metal shavings, and placed in a frame of the artist’s own devising. Berman wrote the title, Radiograph of a Heart, on the back. It refers to the medical X-rays that doctors had recently come to rely on. Yet Berman’s point seems to be that while a heart can be monitored scientifically, the emotions associated with it lie beyond the power of medical science. Russian by birth, Berman fled St. Petersburg during the Revolution and settled in Paris. Later, as a Jew, he fled the Nazi advance and took refuge in New York and Hollywood. His peace of mind, however, was shattered by the suicide of his wife, actress Una Munson (who played Belle Watling in Gone With the Wind). That distressing event — “Don’t follow me” she admonished in her suicide note...

French gate-leg table, circa 1650. Oak with metal fittings. Measures: Height 28 ¼“ width 54“ depth 20 ½“ / 41 ½“/ 62“ $20,000. This solid oak French Baroque table...