Have a Deco at this

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I started by travelling in France and soon found, apart from the more common clear Lalique 28 examples I had purchased, some examples of the Falcon, Large Dragonfly, Falcon and Coq Nain made in amethyst and coloured glass.
These variations were also far more expensive and with the backing of my client I embarked on a mission to locate not only every example in the normal clear and frosted glass, but to also to buy every example of every type of mascot in tinted, coloured and opalescent glass. My quest led me to Switzerland where a few mascots appeared for auction, including a rare strongly amethyst tinted Eagles Head. This piece was, at the time, estimated very lowly and soon I realised that other dealers from the USA, France and Japan were also after it, having themselves spotted the auction house’s mistake. Of course I had to own it for my client, and at the time it set a new world record of £26,500 for the piece. It was then I started to be contacted by many collectors and dealers in France and Europe.

Knowing that I had set the world record price, they started to offer me rare Lalique and other mascots. My client by this time had also given me a commission to build up a major metal mascot collection and a choice non-mascot Lalique glassware portfolio.

After five more years my client invited me to his home and I was naturally interested to see how he was displaying his impressive collection. He told me that they were kept in a cage! He led me over to a large garage complex in one corner of which was a large metal security walk-in safe and inside, stacked to the ceiling, were hundreds of unopened boxes. I persuaded him to start opening the boxes and to display them properly.

He took my advice and when I next visited him he had removed the pieces but had simply stacked the Lalique pieces into a large glass display cabinet in his office. This was rather daunting to say the least as I realised that here on three shelves sat the very finest Lalique mascot collection in the world. Anyway, he soon started to appreciate his collection far more and built long shelves in his garage to display this gigantic metal mascot collection which by now was also building into the world’s finest as there were close to 1400 fabulous pieces just in this one area. He then purchased wonderful, extremely rare French Art Deco cabinets to house his fabulous Lalique collection in great style. It had taken me fifteen years to track them all down and as I had purchased them all personally, and examined each closely, I had gained so much experience that helped me greatly over the next fifteen years.

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