Twelve lots from Escape to the Modernist Garden, chosen for what they do to a real terrace rather than for what they would fetch.
Bidding on Escape to the Modernist Garden opens on Saturday 12 September at 9:00 AM PT. There are 349 lots, most of them outdoor, and the honest problem with a sale this size is that the catalog flattens everything to the same visual weight. A five-foot fountain and a garden mushroom look the same on a phone.
So this is a shorter list. Twelve lots, chosen on one test: would we put it in a Los Angeles garden and live with it. Each entry says why in a sentence.
The twelve
- Lot 2, mosaic outdoor dining set. Table, bench and two stools in one hand-set surface, which is the rarest condition for garden furniture and the reason this is the highest estimate in the group.
- Lot 11, monumental cast stone fountain. At 56 inches with tiered basins and heavy mineral weathering, it settles a courtyard without needing anything else near it.
- Lot 6, sculptural faux bois tree trunk planter. The irregular tubular openings rising from the trunk make it read as sculpture from every angle rather than only from the front.
- Lot 22, Willy Guhl monumental triangular planter. The sharply cut interior geometry against a soft weathered exterior is Guhl's argument in one object.
- Lot 7, pair of monumental concrete planters with star motif. A recessed star on a plain tapered body, which is enough ornament for a modern facade and not a gram more.
- Lot 10, pair of Art Deco geometric concrete planters from the 1930s. Green pigment still sitting in the relief, and small enough at 14 inches to work on a step or a low wall.
- Lot 129, Mario Papperzini for John Salterini, pair of Amalfi chaise lounges. Open iron grid, articulated backs and integrated wheels, which is the American patio tradition at its most disciplined.
- Lot 194, Brown Jordan set of four Venetian Grotto shell chairs. Cast aluminum, so they can be lifted by one person and left out all year, which very little else here can claim.
- Lot 258, faux bois sculptural garden lantern. Eighty-one inches of branching concrete that lights a path and doubles as the only vertical in a flat bed.
- Lot 309, Rene Malaval white perforated metal bench. Seventy-nine inches of French postwar functionalism that weighs a fraction of the concrete around it.
- Lot 122, set of three concrete garden mushrooms. Weathered red and white caps on spikes, the one piece of humor in the sale and priced for it.
- Lot 214, monumental cast stone bowl on pedestal. A 47-inch basin that works planted, filled with water, or left empty as a form.
How the twelve work together
There is a rough plan hidden in the list. The fountain and the bowl on pedestal are anchors: one object each, placed once, never moved. The Guhl triangular planter, the star planters and the Art Deco pair are the middle register, the things you rearrange seasonally. The Papperzini chaises and the Brown Jordan chairs are the only seating in the group that a single person can move alone, which matters more than it sounds on a terrace that has to be swept.
The mosaic dining set is the exception to all of it. Table, bench and stools were surfaced together, so the tesserae read as one field rather than as matched furniture. Sets like this are almost never intact, and when they break up they do not come back together.
Before you bid
Every lot here is available to see at 249 South Mission Road during preview. Concrete and cast stone are the two categories where a photograph is least reliable, because weight, surface and the depth of the patina do not travel through a screen. If you cannot come in, request additional images and the measurements you actually need, which for garden pieces is usually the base footprint rather than the height.
Pickup is within ten days of the sale and Circa does not pack or ship, so decide how a 56-inch fountain leaves the building before you bid on it, not after.
