A Pietra Dura Table Top

Today we turn briefly to furniture seen in a Chicago auction. A fine pietra dura table top, probably of Italian origin, is paired with an ornate, claw-footed, tripod base. 

Here's looking at you, kid:

The presale estimate of $5,000-$10,000 seems high. True, it does include the base, but that can't be to everyone's taste. See, for example, the last photo.

Pietra Dura Table
Chicago Estate Advisors listing accessed eleven hours prior to the sale

https://www.liveauctioneers.com/item/203705534_pietra-dura-stone-inlaid-table

Pietra Dura Table
Chicago Estate Advisors item details

No sale!

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Saul Steinberg: The One Franc Table

The One Franc Table is a wooden table top constructed by Saul Steinberg in 1973-1974. It contains extraordinary paper and wooden elements masquerading as mundane objects. On the table's surface Steinberg has separately created both sides of a supposed postcard, a one franc stamp, as well as a pencil and dip pen. The image on the postcard is a compelling and colorful landscape with a lone standing rubber-stamped figure, while the written side of the postcard is a nearly-convincing fake Steinberg document. Both sides of the postcard have what seem to be circular rubber stamp cancellation marks, although the one franc postage stamp for which the work is titled has yet to be affixed, so the card is represented as unsent. Thus an ordinary desktop tableau has somehow been reimagined painstakingly as a fanciful, artistic grouping. The piece did well at auction in 2017, selling for more than four times its high estimate at Sotheby's New York.

The One Franc Table, 1973-1974
Saul Steinberg

Saul Steinberg
Sotheby's New York
Contemporary Art Day Auction, Lot 158, 17 November 2017

http://www.sothebys.com/en/auctions/ecatalogue/2017/contemporary-art-day-auction-n09714/lot.158.html?locale=en

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