Art Of The Day Weekly

The Sultan's cup

PARIS – This young auction house held its first sale in May 2014, and is held by two thirty year olds -Lucie Eléonore Riveron and Cédric Melado former specialists Piasa and Tajan. Their aim is to refresh the image of auction houses by holding sales in the evening –at 7 p.m. -, placing a wine bar right next door, and presenting exhibitions in a manicured manner for three weeks, quite a change from the regulatory day and a half at Drouot. Their themes are rather widely spanned and this sale is no exception, with paintings from the Greek school, furniture from the XXth century avant garde, polychrome Christs and even pompous Parisian XIXth century “art pompier“. One piece object sticks out of the lot: the bowl of Osman III (1754-1757). While Diogenes had thrown his cup away when he saw a young boy quench his thirst by simply using his hands, the Sultan had no intention of doing the same. And he never did. No wonder: it was made in Vincennes porcelain, with a refined floral decoration on a celestial blue background and gold chiseled lines. It was offered to banker Michel Zarifi, to thank him for his support, by another Sultan, Abdulhamid II, who would go down in history as the perpetrator of the first massacres of Armenians in 1894-96, the dress rehearsal of the genocide that will soon be commemorated a century later.
• Quelles histoires, 2 March 2015 at FauveParis.

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