More than 500 lots of fine and rare Lalique and Art Glass will be the draw on Nov. 19 in Heritage Auctions’ Lalique & Art Glass Signature® Auction, in New York, at the Ukrainian Institute of America at the Fletcher-Sinclair Mansion, continuing Heritage’s tradition of conducting an annual auction devoted to art glass for collector.

“This will be our best art glass event to date,” said Nick Dawes, Vice President of Special Collections at Heritage, “with a huge variety of fresh glass, much of it not seen on the market for more than 50 years.”

The collection will be on public display at The Fletcher-Sinclair Mansion, 2 East 79th Street (at 5th Ave.), on Nov. 18 and 19.

The more than 500 lots in the auction have been assembled from more than a dozen American private collections, the majority offered at low estimate with little or no reserve. The auction begins with Tiffany glass including a ‘Daffodil’ table lamp consigned from a family who received it as a wedding gift in 1917, and collection of Tiffany glass from the Tennessee estate of Doctor Justin Adler, purchased mainly more than 30 years ago and consigned to benefit the Jewish Foundation in Memphis.

Following is French glass from a private east coast collection, purchased mainly in New England during the 1930s, and recently discovered in storage. Among the gems is a Daum artistic cameo ‘Orchid’ vase and a superb and unrecorded ‘Fond de la Mer’ vase by Emile Galle.

This section includes a remarkable private collection of Galle cameo glass, recently discovered in a Brooklyn attic where it had been stored for more than 35 years after the original owner purchased the pieces in Paris. Other French glass includes an exquisite private collection uncovered by Dawes during a recent visit to Atlanta with a popular PBS show, featuring Daum landscape vases of exceptional quality and a remarkable early Galle vase enameled with butterflies found in a Florida private collection. 

Adding to the Nancy glass is a small but very fine collection of Galle marquetry furniture from a New York private collection.

Highlighting the French art glass is the impressive collection of works by Charles Schneider, carefully assembled across three decades by Roy and Susan Bittan and featuring Le Verre Francais vases and lamps along with more than 100 artistic pieces of various techniques.

Roy is well known as the original keyboard player and songwriter for Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band, and less well known as a collector of French art glass, a passion shared with his wife Susan. It was this passion that originally brought the rocker and his wife together, and they’ve indulged it while on tour many times and by attending countless auctions. Now, the couple relates, they’ve decided to make room in their collection for some new additions.

“The work of Charles Schneider gained new appreciation among collectors following a landmark exhibition of his oeuvre in Paris in 1984,” said Dawes, “and the Bittan Collection represents every aspect of his glass-making genius. Roy and Susan are meticulous and scholarly curators who rejected far more Schneider than they acquired, so everything from this collection is the best and the rarest.  Many pieces were chosen as illustrations in the standard work on Schneider.”

Other American glass includes several rare pieces of early Steuben and an extremely rare ‘Rhuba Rhombic’ vaseline glass fish bowl on its original Art Deco wrought iron stand. 

The auction’s second session will be devoted completely to Lalique and is comprised of more than 200 lots.

Four important private collections are featured, including such classic vases as Tourbillons, in clear glass with black enamel,  Perruches in electric blue, Sauterelles in emerald green; statuary including two versions of Thais and Suzanne including a superb matched opalescent pair with bronze bases and a fine Grande Nue;  a strong selection of automobile hood ornaments, the Dorothy C. Shaker Collection of perfume bottles and boxes and some rare items including a Le Jour et la Nuit clock and an intriguing collection of Lalique architectural panels originally removed from the Coty Building on 5th Avenue in New York then discovered in a California storage facility more than 20 years ago.