Eileen Gray's Dragons' Chair Attracts Monster Bid

The chair became the unexpected star of the show as Yves Saint Laurent's business partner brought the pair's trove of art and furniture to Christie's in Paris.

First published March 2009.

The chair broke the world record for a decorative item when it fetched over €21m at an auction at the Grand Palais in Paris. Auctioneers at Christie’s had expected the piece to realise a price in the region of €2m-€3m euros.

The lot was won by Cheska Vallois, a Paris-based gallerist who had owned the chair before. She had previously purchased it in 1971 for a modest 250 francs (€1,500) and sold it on to the French fashion designer Yves Saint Laurent two years later. The chair remained in his possession until his death last year from brain cancer.

The armchair is one of over 700 items the fashion designer’s business partner and one-time lover, Pierre Bergé, has brought to auction. The pair accumulated the bumper collection of art and furniture, which also features works by Cezanne, Degas and Gauguin, over the half century of their association. Many of the pieces, including the Gray chair, had furnished their pads in Paris’s well-heeled seventh arrondissement.

Gray (1878-1976) created the chair between 1917 and 1919 while she was studying at the Slade School of Fine Art in London. Standing a stumpy twenty four inches high and upholstered, according to the auction’s catalogue, in ‘lacquered brownish orange and silver brown leather’, the Dragons’ chair possesses an awkward charm. It owes its name to its wooden armrests, which are carved into the shape of a pair of slimline dragons.

Like a later Gray piece, the Bibdendum chair, the seat and backrest are generously stuffed. The chair's Art Deco aesthetic might be a bit much for those who prefer more sparing modernist designs, but the intricate white on black lacquer work of the dragons' eyes and fine detailing of their bodies are rendered with real deftness.

The proceeds of the sale are to go to the Pierre Bergé-Yves Saint Laurent Foundation and a new foundation that Bergé plans to set up to conduct research into the AIDS virus.