
Property from the Collection of David H. Murdock
Lot closes
April 14, 05:08 PM GMT
Estimate
3,000 - 5,000 USD
Current Bid
100 USD
3 Bids
No reserve
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Read more.Lot Details
Description
with gilt-tooled border green leather games surface; the corners with slides revealing removeable brass wells fitted with shell-form ashtrays (one lacking); the underside branded and bearing a paper manuscript labelSANS EPOQUE Robsjohn Gibbings
height 29 in.; width 34 3/4 in.; depth 34 3/4 in.
73.75m; 88.5 cm; 88.5 cm
Supplied to Hilda Olsen Boldt Weber (1885–1951) at 10644 Bellagio Road, Bel Air, Los Angeles, later known as the Casa Encantada, in the late 1930s;
Acquired with the house in 1950 by Conrad Hilton (1887-1979);
Acquired with the house in 1980 by David H. Murdock.
The Casa Encantada is a 40,000 square-foot neoclassical mansion at 10644 Bellagio Road in Bel Air, Los Angeles, completed in 1938 for the socialite Mrs. Hilda Boldt Weber by the Russian-born architect James Dolena (1888–1978), who built houses for numerous prominent clients in Los Angeles in the first half of the 20th Century. The interiors were furnished by the British-born Terence Harold Robsjohn-Gibbings (d.1976) in a fusion of pared-down Ancient Grecian and Art Deco styles that is widely considered to be the designer's masterpiece.
Financial difficulties compelled Boldt Weber to put the house up for sale in 1949, and the following year it was acquired by the hotel magnate Conrad Hilton, who retained the original interiors and resided in the property until his death in 1979, after which the house was sold to David H. Murdock for $12.4 million, a record at the time for the most expensive house ever sold in the United States. Murdock then sold the majority of the furnishings in two Sotheby's New York auctions on 18 December 1980 and 5 February 1981 in order to accommodate his growing collection of important 18th-century English furniture and Chinese works of art.
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