From Giacometti to Lalanne: A Designer’s Dream Sale With Ellie Peugeot | Sotheby’s

Why It Matters

The sale demonstrates how narrative‑driven curation can elevate the perceived value of design objects, influencing collector behavior and setting a new standard for luxury auction experiences.

Key Takeaways

• Designer Ellie Peugeot curates Sotheby’s design sale blending heritage and nature
• Florist Thierry Boutemy adds botanical reinterpretations to historic artworks
• Highlighted pieces include Christian Bérard panel, Jean‑Michel Frank lacquer works
• Giacometti’s surreal “Masque Serpent” showcases mythic energy and bronze patina
• Peugeot emphasizes layering objects to craft personal narratives for clients

Summary

Sotheby’s recent design auction was staged by London‑based interior designer and scenographer Ellie Peugeot, who brought her heritage‑focused lens to the sale. Drawing on her work with historic properties and her board role at the World Monuments Fund, Peugeot treated the auction floor as a blank canvas to fuse architecture, nature and narrative.

Peugeot’s curatorial strategy hinged on layering objects to tell a personal story. She enlisted florist Thierry Boutemy to introduce botanical elements that echo the original ateliers’ creative freedom, and she selected works that span Art Deco lacquer, theatrical painting and surreal sculpture. The breadth of periods—from early 20th‑century pieces to late‑career Giacometti works—allowed her to construct an immersive, time‑spanning environment.

Among the highlights, Peugeot pointed to Christian Bérard’s painted panel, prized by collectors such as Jacques Grange and Elsa Schiaparelli, for its fleeting theatrical quality. She praised Jean‑Michel Frank’s lacquered paravent poisson for its labor‑intensive urushi technique and restrained club chair, exemplifying Art Deco craftsmanship. The auction also featured Diego Giacometti’s playful sculpture and Alberto Giacometti’s bronze “Masque Serpent,” a mythic piece from his surrealist period that commands strong visual energy.

The presentation underscores a growing trend where luxury auctions become experiential narratives rather than mere sales, encouraging collectors to view objects as layers in a personal story. By marrying heritage, nature and contemporary staging, Peugeot’s approach may reshape how high‑end design pieces are marketed and valued, prompting deeper engagement from a clientele seeking both provenance and emotional resonance.

Original Description

A room can reveal more about a person than a portrait ever could. For interior designer and scenographer Ellie Peugeot, whose work moves between London and Paris, collecting is less about ownership than atmosphere: the tension between history and modernity, restraint and play, memory and reinvention. Moving through works by Alberto Giacometti, Jean-Michel Frank and other defining names of 20th-century design, she reflects on the emotional charge objects carry long after they leave their original homes.

Set against a richly layered naturalistic backdrop, the conversation drifts through Art Deco craftsmanship, surrealist forms and the quiet confidence of great interiors. There is patina, lacquer, bronze, silver leaf and the strange magic of pieces that seem to hold time inside them. The result feels less like a tour of collectible design and more like an intimate philosophy of living with art.

This spring, the Important Design sale is cast in a new light: curated by Ellie Peugeot, with exhibition design conceived in collaboration with Thierry Boutemy as an immersive journey into a dreamlike garden, presented by Velocity Black.

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