The Dragon’s Chair

The "Dragons" armchair (French: "Fauteuil aux Dragons") was created between 1917 and 1919 by the Irish architect and designer Eileen Gray. The armchair is made of wood and features two stylised lacquered dragons. It is 61 by 91 centimeters in size.

Christie's auctioneers described the chair as follows: “"In the form of unfurling petals, upholstered in brown leather, the frame in sculpted wood, lacquered brownish orange and silver and modeled as the serpentine, intertwined bodies of two dragons, their eyes in black lacquer on a white ground, their bodies decorated in low relief with stylised clouds.” The chair's dragon imagery and clouds have been compared to classic Chinese art iconography, and the flowing form of the ornately carved armrests has been compared to a "sea monster," earning the chair the moniker "Dragons."

Suzanne Talbot, Gray's patron, was the Dragon chair's initial owner. Cheska Vallois, a Parisian art dealer, bought it for $2,700 in 1971 and sold it to Yves Saint Laurent, a French fashion designer, in 1973. In February 2009, the chair was auctioned off as part of the Yves Saint Laurent and Pierre Bergé collection at Christie's in Paris. It sold for €21,905,000 ($26.6 million) against a pre-sale estimate of €2-3 million, setting a new record for a work of decorative art from the twentieth century. Cheska Vallois, the chair's 2009 purchaser, later stated that the expense of acquiring it was "the price of desire."

Price: $26,6 million