Have a Deco at this

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I had always dreamt of handling the ultimate Lalique pieces from the moment I purchased my original 1932 Lalique catalogue and realised just how many beautiful objects René Lalique had designed. Over the past decades I have been very lucky to handle the finest of these. But, as the Lalique collection grew, one piece still eluded me. The Fox!

This was the rarest of all 30 pieces and all I had to go on was a rather blurry photograph in an early Lalique catalogue. The situation was to change in the mid 1980’s when one evening at about midnight I received a call from a dealer in Paris. He said that he knew of one that had just been purchased by another dealer. He said that if I could get to Paris the following afternoon it could be mine. I did not sleep that night knowing that it existed and that it would hopefully be mine the next day. I also realised that as it was an extremely rare piece and if anyone else knew of its exact whereabouts it could be lost forever to other collectors who also wanted an example. I flew to Paris and the piece was indeed there. I was amazed by its size and detail and spent many happy days photographing it before it went to my client who had now managed to achieve his dream collection.

There were apparently only six Foxes known to exist in the world in the late 1980’s. Since then I have located four more perfect examples and four more in damaged condition, one missing a base, another with badly damaged ears and another broken in half and glued together. So just how many were actually made? Where will I find the next one? A lifetime’s quest for me! Through the 1980’s I found that the prices of Lalique and rare metal mascots were starting to reach very high levels, culminating in 1989 with tremendous auctions held in Monaco and Paris, where rare metal mascots were starting to reach well over £5000 each and an example of the Bugatti Royale without the important foundry stamp also claimed the world record price for a metal mascot at £33,000.

This was yet another milestone I had yet to reach, but within three years I tracked down a superb Bugatti Royale mascot in an obscure country auction in France and purchased this example, which luckily also had the Valsuani Cire Perdue foundry stamping still intact. In 1989-1990 the world economic climate changed and with the Iraq crisis the Japanese buyers lost interest in Lalique collecting and so the marketplace fell before steadying at a lower level. It took a further five years to regain the lost ground and at long last it returned to 1989 levels around 1999.

The marketplace today is also extremely selective, with the rarest pieces achieving premium prices. It is ever more challenging, but one thing remains constant - the rarest pieces are even more difficult to locate. The elusive Fox has now been joined in his lair by the Owl and the Comete. I now spend far more time tracking the rare pieces down and I am still building up important metal and Lalique glass collections for my world-wide clients.

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