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EXQUISITE COLLECTOR: Sotheby’s sells Bunny Mellon’s treasures
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Art & Design
Treasures of a Lifetime Two thousand items owned by the incomparable connoisseur Bunny Mellon go on the block at Sotheby’s in November
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BY ANNIE GROER
roperty from the Collection of Mrs. Paul Mellon,” goes on the auction block Nov. 10-23 in Manhattan. And quite the collection it is — some 2,000 objects including a bamboo walking stick with a concealed saw for pruning while hiking, a rare 9.75-carat fancy vivid blue diamond pendant and 36 pieces of Louis Vuitton luggage, many of them custom banded in light and dark blue and bearing Bunny Mellon’s monogram. Sotheby’s conservatively estimates that the six sessions featuring four centuries of fine art, furniture, jewelry, silver, plate, porcelain, linens, glassware, decorative accessories and household items will generate more than $100 million. Precisely how much more depends on the bidding wars that erupt for pieces as prosaic as garden tools and as important as two oversize Mark Rothko paintings estimated to be hammered down in Paul and Bunny Mellon (Undated photo courtesy of the Estate of Mrs. Paul Mellon) the $35 million-$50 million range. All were collected by two of the wealthiest was a way of life that frankly does not exist people in America, who grew up in the now- anymore. She worked at it a very long time, but vanished splendor of the early 20th century. she understood that if something took 20 years Rachel Lambert Lloyd Mellon, heiress to to mature, that would be O.K.” the Listerine/Warner-Lambert fortune, was Bunny Mellon’s long view applied not only a brilliant, self-taught horticulturist and to the cultivation and placement of trees and landscaper with a discerning eye for architecture plants but also to the patronage of artists and and interiors. She died in March at 103 at her artisans.“She was seeing some of the beginnings beloved Oak Spring Farm in Upperville. Her of some very great art and had the time and second husband, widower Paul Mellon, was money to do it right,” Whitmire says. She also the only son of banker/industrialist Andrew W. had the conviction of her taste to buy what she Mellon, and nurtured lifelong passions for art liked. and thoroughbreds. He died in 1999. “Mrs. Mellon was not just a woman of Rarefied Tastes taste. She had vision,” says Elaine Whitmire, a For students of American dynasties or anyone A magnificent and rare pear-shaped fancy vivid blue diamond pendant weighing 9.75 carats mounted in Sotheby’s vice chairman specializing in single- just plain curious about what a very wealthy, platinum. Estimate $10 million-$15 million. owner sales. “Looking at the way she lived, it cultured couple with superior taste and multiple
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homes would collect during their long lives, the auction provides many, many answers, including: A partial dinner service of 1740s Meissen botanical bowls, plates, platters and tureens; a mid 20th–century metal table base made by longtime friend Diego Giacometti, featuring the heads of dogs and stags; and a Fulco di Verdura sodalite rhinoceros figurine set with gold, gems and rock crystal; Winslow Homer’s 1873 oil sketch for “Children on the Beach;” seven George III parcel-gilt black dining chairs, circa 1760; and a small 1940s hooked rug depicting a racehorse, a jockey and the words, “We Won,” doubtless a nod to the Mellons’ passion for horse breeding that produced Sea Hero, winner of the 1993 Kentucky Derby. Mellon’s jewelry is all over the map. That fancy blue diamond set in platinum and its paler, slightly smaller 9.1-carat companion are stylistic opposites of the circa-1900 Cartier graduated choker with 29 diamonds weighing a nice round 115 carats. But not every piece of jewelry is valuable, or even real. Costume necklaces, brooches and earrings by Kenneth Jay Lane and Givenchy and enameled bangle bracelets by Hermès are mixed in with the diamonds and sapphires. To generate buzz and lure potential bidders, Sotheby’s has launched an international tour of select pieces, with public exhibitions scheduled in London, Geneva, Hong Kong and Los Angeles until the end of October. By early November, it will all be arranged in galleries throughout Sotheby’s 10-floor Manhattan headquarters. It is not yet known whether timed tickets will be issued to those hoping to see the Mellon collection before it is dispersed. Ticketing was a must for the 1996 auction of property from the estate of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis two years after her death. Throngs of ordinary New Yorkers and tourists eagerly lined up for a last glimpse of Camelot, and the belongings — from a rocking chair to golf clubs used by the slain President John F. Kennedy. Since then, America’s obsession with celebrity — a concept Mrs. Mellon “found distasteful,” Whitmire says — has only heightened. That means that buyers are willing to pay a great deal more for a piece owned by someone famous, whether a gown worn by
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Diana, Princess of Wales, or an eye-popping diamond given by Richard Burton to Elizabeth Taylor.
A PREMIUM ON PROVENANCE In certain circles, there will be an undeniable cachet in owning something chosen by the self-taught horticulturist who redesigned the White House Rose Garden at the request of her dear friend Jackie Kennedy, and who helped plan the landscaping on the estate of couturier Hubert de Givenchy, whose clothing she wore exclusively in the latter part of her life (he maintained a private atelier for her in Paris). Over the years, she also decorated the homes and gardens she shared with her husband in Washington, Upperville, New York, Paris, Nantucket, Martha’s Vineyard and Antigua. It is a plus, of course, when someone is noted “for their vision, great taste and collecting. Those are three important individual things. Mrs. Mellon had all of them, her vision in what she collected, her elegance. It is like a seal of approval to have something she owned,” Whitmire says. Proceeds from the sale will support the Gerard B. Lambert foundation Mellon created in memory of her father to support educational and horticultural programs. Although the Mellons acquired many, many things, not all of them made it into the sale. Two choice Rothkos and a painting by Richard Diebenkorn were sold privately earlier this year for about $300 million, possibly to the royal family of Qatar, reports Bloomberg News. Bunny Mellon’s extensive couture wardrobe, exclusively designed by Cristóbal Balenciaga and later by his protégé, Givenchy, are nowhere in evidence. The closets of such fashionable women as Brooke Astor and Katharine Graham were likewise not emptied for their estate auctions either, Whitmire notes. “Sometimes they donate those things to museums and sometimes the clothing shows up in very high-end charity thrift shops,” says a source from another auction house. Mellon left real estate, art, furnishings and mementoes to family and friends as well as to museums and other institutions. It is not known what sort of message she was sending to stepson Timothy Mellon, Paul
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A gold, gem-set rock crystal and sodalite Fulco di Verdura rhinoceros, mid-20th century. Estimate $15,000-$20,000.
Diego Giacometti trapezoidal table modeled with the heads of stags and dogs. Estimate $80,000-$120,000.
A Meissen “Bruhlische Allerlei” part dinner service. Estimate $70,000-$100,000.
An exquisite gold and diamond riviere necklace set wth 29 old-European cut diamonds weighing about 111 carats. Cartier, circa 1900. Est. $$1.25 million-$1.5 million.
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art & design
^ Mark Rothko’s “Untitled (Yellow, Orange, Yellow, Light Orange) was completed in 1955, a pinnacle year in which he painted only 22 works, 13 of which reside in prestigious museum collections. Estimate $15 million-$20 million.
“Children on a Beach” by Winslow Homer, 1873. Estimate $3 million-$5 million.
Mellon’s son by his first marriage, when she bequeathed to him “the porcelain cabbage located on the dining room table at the Oak Spring Farm residence.” (There will be several more offered in this sale.) A Schlumberger antelope pin and a long gold chain with pearls were left to Jackie’s daughter, Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg. Nothing, apparently, went to John Edwards, the 2008 Democratic presidential hopeful who wooed the widow Mellon ferociously for large political donations. More than $700,000 in socalled “Bunny Money” was used to support his mistress, Rielle Hunter and their lovechild, as his wife, Elizabeth Edwards, was dying of cancer. After a jury acquitted Edwards on one charge and deadlocked on five others, federal prosecutors declined to re-try him. But the sordid scandal horrified the publicity-averse Mellon, who was unaware of how her money was being used.
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Might Edwards — who actually showed up for her funeral in Upperville but sat in an overflow hall because he arrived late — be bidding on an item or two for old times’ sake? A request for comment from his law firm’s publicist went unanswered. There will probably be no dearth of buyers, however, from garden aficionados to collectors of serious art and jewelry. Warrenton-based interior designer Barry Barr Dixon says the breadth of Mellon offerings will attract a wide range of bidders. A collector of Americana and Native American baskets, Dixon will peruse “the low-end type of things,” while advising interested clients on the pricier pieces. And yes, he says, provenance matters. “Mrs. Mellon was in that pantheon of the Duchess of Windsor and Jackie Kennedy,” so there is an appreciation that these “arbiters of style and taste owned it, they loved it, they touched it.”
A small 1940s hooked rug depicting a racehorse and jockey and the words “We won.” Estimate $300
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THE mellon mansions
”Oak Spring Farm,” Bunny Mellon’s primary residence in Upperville, Virginia, is currently on the market for $70 million.
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aul and Bunny Mellon collected art and countless objects of desire. They also collected choice real estate, in Washington, Upperville, New York’s Upper East Side, Nantucket, Martha’s Vineyard, Paris and Antigua. They commissioned homes, created compounds and transformed mansions, notably turning one large Embassy Row Georgian into a gallery next door to their equally large main digs, and rebuilding a four-story Manhattan carriage house into a 12-car garage, furniture warehouse and a a home and studio space for Bruce Budd, Bunny Mellon’s interior designer and longtime confidant. With Sotheby’s poised to auction 2,000 Mellon possessions in November, at least two of the couple’s properties are on the market, the others having been sold, passed on to heirs or conservation groups. The crown jewel is Oak Spring Farm in Upperville, Virginia, listed by Washington Fine Properties at $70 million. The 2,000acre estate nestled between the Blue Ridge and Bull Run mountains includes the 1941 neo-Georgian “Brick House,” which sheltered part of the couple’s vast art collection. The property includes her splendid gardens, orchards and greenhouses; a mile-long airstrip; a pool house designed by I.M. Pei; two equestrian stables with a total of 43 stalls, 20 cottages, multiple barns and shops. Not included in the sale are 100 acres of land, the Little Oak Spring cottage where the couple lived and the Oak Spring Garden Library, the modernist light-filled research center housing thousands of botanical books and manuscripts. It will remain open to scholars by appointment. But don’t look for the extraordinary Mark Rothko that anchored one end of the library. It was quietly sold earlier this year (see main story). The Mill Reef Club estate on Antigua, Leeward Islands, has been on the market
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Mrs. Mellon’s 27-acre oceanfront estate in the Mill Reef Club on Antigua is currently for sale at $11.5 million.
since 2012 by Christie’s International Real Estate. The current $11.5 million price tag includes 27 acres of grounds at the membersonly club built after World War II by a group of tycoons seeking a discreet tropical getaway. The British Colonial plantationstyle main house is built of local stone and features a double master suite overlooking Half Moon Bay and several of Bunny Mellon’s gardens. The house also contains a great room and dining room, a guestroom/library, wine cellar, separate guesthouse, pool house, two greenhouses, vegetable gardens, and a citrus orchard. There is a hitch, however. “The owner would need to be pre-approved by the Mill Reef Club,” a Christie’s rep tells me. Such ve[ing could rule out Russian oligarchs, Hollywood ho[ies and others with more cash than cachet. Before Paul Mellon’s death, the couple also had a pair of side-by-side homes here. Their onetime art repository at 3055 Whitehaven St. NW is a short walk from the District digs of Bill and Hillary Clinton as well as several embassies. The stately, four-story neo-Georgian was bought in 2001 for $4.6 million by Wayne Berman — lobbyist, businessman and major Republican fundraiser — and his wife Lea, White House social secretary under George and Laura Bush. Before moving in, they allowed a passel of interior and garden designers to tart it up as the National Symphony Orchestra decorator show house, and later put their own renovation team to work. In 2011, with their kids in college, the Bermans quietly put it on the market for $20 million but had no takers. The couple will not be listing it again, having go[en used to all that glorious space. “I think we are just going to be here for a while,” Lea Berman says. The Mellons’ primary Washington residence, next door at 3041 Whitehaven St. NW, is now the Polish ambassador’s residence, bought for $9.55 million in 2008 from former Treasury Secretary Nicholas Brady.
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Paul and Bunny Mellon sold their Washington residence, a red brick Georgian mansion at 3041 Whitehaven St. NW, in 1995 for $3.8 million to former Treasury Secretary Nicholas Brady. It is now home to the Polish ambassador.
Thirteen years earlier, Brady paid $3.8 million for the mansion, which contains a ballroom, library, 10 bedrooms, seven baths, a heated exercise pool and, of course, a greenhouse. Both properties back onto the gardens of the British Embassy compound. And what of the other Mellon properties? Bunny Mellon left several homes and parcels of land in Osterville, on Cape Cod, to Stacy B. Lloyd III, her only son from her first marriage to Stacy B. Lloyd Jr., whom she divorced before marrying the widowed Mellon in the 1940s. (Her daughter Eliza Lloyd died in 2000). She also left property on the Cape to grandson Stacy Lloyd IV. Last year, billionaire businessman and conservationist William Koch bought her 26-acre Cape Cod estate on a gated private island called Oyster Harbors for $19.5 million, the Wall Street Journal reported. It boasts a sprawling main house, a beach house, separate studio, greenhouses, a tennis court and 1,000 feet of shoreline. She also bequeathed 40 acres on Nantucket Island to the Nantucket Conservation Foundation. In 2009, the aforementioned Manhattan carriage house at 165 E. 70th St. was sold for $13.5 million to Morgan Stanley chairman John J. Mack and his wife Christy, according to the New York Observer. Another townhouse, designed by the couple in 1965 at 125 E. 70th St., sold for $22.5 million in 2006 to Irish businessman Tony White. There also have been media reports of two apartments in the posh Essex House on Central Park South, about which little is known. At the time of her death, Bunny Mellon may have also owned property in Paris at 15, rue de l’Université. Little is known about her French holdings except that she gave “my very important architect’s table” from her Paris flat to couturier Hubert de Givenchy.
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