Tresor de la Mer Bottle, by Lalique, Brings High Price at eBay
This beautiful perfume bottle and case (perfume in the “pearl”), designed in a limited run by Lalique in 1936, sold at an eBay Live auction (at NJ’s David Rago Auctions) last week for a monstrous $180,000 US.
Hang on to those perfume bottles ladies, maybe you will make your descendants rich beyond all imagination. ;) As an interesting side note, the buyer wanted to remain anonymous. I would too if I had purchased a little piece of glass for that much money. Especially right before Christmas. My husband would croak. Ha!
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POSTED IN: Beauty News, Fragrance
1 opinion for Tresor de la Mer Bottle, by Lalique, Brings High Price at eBay
Sue Ellen Davis
Aug 11, 2007 at 1:36 am
The selling price of this Lilique flacon design (1936) for Tresor de la Mer, does not surprise me at all.
You must consider that René Lilique is to the fragrance flacon and art/crystal/glass what Monet is to Impressionism.
The Tresor de la Mer flacon is not only beautiful, but a landmark in the career of René Lilique as an artist, once again
working independently.
Lilique was extremely accomplished and re-known for his artistry as a jeweler/sculptor, before he was approached by COTY.
His work was featured in Decorative Art Review in 1897, as the best jewelry designer in France.
He was deemed in that article as one of those rare artists who is wholly responsible for his creations from design through the finished product.
He had designed and exhibited at Mus’ee des Arts Decoratifs in Paris a jewelry type flask made of amethyst set in red enamel crowned with a garnet encrusted stopper.
In 1900, COTY, determined to work with Lilique, because of his reputation, approached him to create a fragrance bottle.
Lilique refused, as he found perfume bottle labels to be beneath him.
By 1908, Coty finally convinced him to create bottle designs.
Lilique then engulfed himself in the technique and medium of glass as a medium and created a new way of creating fragrance bottles using the mold process.
The creative and passionate relationship between these two men with a vision for uncompremised luxury and that changed the face of fragrance industry and it’s bottles into collaborative fine art.
In 1920 Lilique began to work on his own designs as he grew tired of his partnership with COTY. His once fine art glass creations where being mass produced after the 1920’s . Lilique could not stand to be looked upon by COTY as a mere supplier and their working relationship finally ended in 1834.
This monumental collaboration lasted 24 years.
In my opinion, The Tresor de la Mer is a different approach to the flacon design. The Tresor design is more of an art glass sculpture, that just “happens to encompass a fragrance”
Is it possibly symbolic?
The Artist who made Fragrance bottle design into an art form that served the fragrance industry…
now designs a bottle for the fragrance industry that serves the art of form.
A new approach by Lilique now completely free to perfect his artistry without the of the visions & expectations of COTY pressing him to design the bottle.
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