No 5

Friday, April 26, 2024 5pm

Boston, Massachusetts

On Friday April 26 starting at 5pm Eastern Time, the Perfume Bottles Auction will conduct its live and online auction in conjunction with the 36th annual IPBA convention, offering an exceptional variety of bottles and vanity items sourced from private collections around the world, all fresh to market and many extremely rare. The event is to take place at The Revere Hotel - Boston Common: 200 Stuart Street, Boston, MA, 02116. Print catalogs are now available for shipping, while the online catalog is now available on LiveAuctioneers - Click Here.

In the spotlight is Lot #5 - the original 1921 Chanel No 5 perfume bottle that few people have ever seen. This rare design predates the 1924 bottle still in use today, and has a presale estimate of $20,000-$30,000; Click Here to read more about this bottle. The lots that follow feature two c1929 Chanel bottles in a burl wood coffer, and a rare and unopened Chanel No 46, which was the first perfume launched after WWII by Parfums Chanel.

Bottles inspired by antiquity include the 1928 Bichara “Parvati”, as a crystal obelisk covered in hieroglyphics, and the 1920s Raffy “Futuris” of textured black glass formed as an ancient vessel with gilded Assyrian royal masks as handles. Rivaling any Greek goddess is a 1920s Czechoslovakian 13 inch satin finished nude stopper standing on an Art Deco black glass bottle as its pedestal, by Josef Schmidt. Other unusually shaped Czechoslovakian bottles include a sailboat, Chinese snuff bottles, and one having a 3-dimensional Art Deco stopper as a Modern Dance couple.

For the first time, 3 mechanical perfume presentations appear together, and 2 of them are music boxes! The 1950’s Perfumes Rudy from Italy, mimics an old-time victrola with perfume in the horn. When opened, music plays as a record turns, and a little doll dances; a 1940s Schiaparelli perfume ad comes to life with 2 “Shocking” presentations - one as a Swiss weather vane of four bottles that rotate to music; another as a spinning roulette wheel with four bottles. These are followed by an impressive scale Schiaparelli dress form store display bottle on a leopard spotted base for the 1936 “Shocking” perfume.

The evening offers a colorful selection of 1920s Art Deco Bakelite, celluloid and other plastics formed as flapper dance purses, dresser items, and perfume bottles including one shaped as an airplane with propeller stopper, handmade of 13 carved parts.

Two Italian souvenir perfume bottles are formed as Venetian landmarks. The first is a porcelain gondola holding a glass bottle for Linetti’s 1940s “Notte de Venezia”; the other is The Lion of Venice monument in St Marks Square represented as a glass column with porcelain cap and base for a 1958 Vidal perfume.

Among the 100 lots offered, Rene Lalique enthusiasts will marvel at the condition of 5 items from the Roger & Gallet “Cigalia” line; while Baccarat collectors will find exceptional presentations including the 1911 Baccarat  bottle for A. Gravier “L’Envouternet” (“The Spell”), and the 1928 Lucien Gaillard Art Deco designed bottle for Silka “Ombre du Soir” (“Evening Shadow”).

The evening ends on a high note with the oldest item, an 1880s Palais  Royal “birdcage” of cranberry glass with gilt bronze fittings, holding two perfume bottles below a parrot on perch.

This is the longest running and only perfume bottles auction of its kind in the US, and a percentage of the proceeds benefit the IPBA.

1050 2nd Avenue, New York, NY 10022

For more information contact Ken Leach

ken@perfumebottlesauction.com

+1 917-881-8747