‘Extremely rare’ chandelier once bought by UK artist for $310 to be sold for more than $8 million

An artist in the United Kingdom named John Craxton once paid $310 for an unusual chandelier at an antique shop in London which he believed was made by the great sculptor Alberto Giacometti, turns out he was right. The chandelier in question which was created in the late 1940s is poised to be sold for over $8.6 million in a few weeks at Christie’s.

Several works of the revered Swiss sculptor have broken salesroom records previously, notably, the estimated price of the chandelier was up to $3.1 million, reported the Guardian. However, Michelle McMullan at Christie’s recognised the figure as an estimate because such a significant chandelier is “extremely rare”. She also said that the market for Alberto and his brother Diego Giacometti's designs has “never been stronger”.

In 2018, one of Giacometti's chandeliers was auctioned for nearly $9.4 million, she told the Guardian. The chandelier in question was bought by Craxton in the 1960s when he saw it in a shop on Marylebone Road, London and believed it was commissioned by his late friend and art collector Peter Watson. Craxton, who passed away in 2009, was confident about his purchase and the unique light fitting has been a part of his home in north London for almost five decades now.

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Notably, Watson who inherited the family fortune and built up his own important collection of modern and surrealist artworks in Paris, over the years, had commissioned the chandelier from Giacometti during a return trip to Europe around 1946 or 1947.

The unique light fitting has also graced the Bloomsbury offices of Horizon in 1949 before the magazine was shut a year later. Subsequently, it was removed from the building and placed in storage after which no one knows how it found its way to Denton’s antique shop, said a report by the Guardian citing Craxton’s biographer, Ian Collins.

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