Christie’s Design Sale Puts Lalanne’s Houston Frogs in the Spotlight
A set of bronze frogs once installed beside a Houston swimming pool will anchor Christie’s upcoming Design sale, bringing one of François-Xavier Lalanne’s most recognizable decorative inventions back into the market. The four-piece Grenouille fountain set, commissioned by Alexandra Marshall after she met the Lalannes in Paris and later visited their studio in Ury, is estimated at $2.5 million to $3.5 million.
The work reflects the couple’s unusual balance of whimsy and precision. Lalanne (1927–2008) shaped the frogs with human hands and feet, then built them around a practical water system that would make their mouths open and close. The result is both playful and engineered, a reminder that the Lalannes often treated furniture, sculpture, and garden ornament as overlapping forms rather than separate categories.
The set arrives at a moment when Lalanne’s market has shown renewed strength. In March, a single bronze Grenouille sold at Christie’s London for £914,400 ($1.2 million), more than four times its low estimate. Last December, Anne Schlumberger’s copper Hippopotamus Bar brought $31.4 million at Sotheby’s, setting a record for the artist and underscoring the appetite for major Lalanne works with distinguished provenance.
Christie’s June 10 sale at Rockefeller Center also includes a patinated bronze ram by Lalanne from 2008, estimated at $800,000 to $1.2 million. The owner acquired it at Christie’s Design in 2022 for $831,600.
Beyond Lalanne, the sale draws heavily on decorative arts and midcentury design. A Henning Koppel eel covered dish from 1956 carries an estimate of $60,000 to $80,000, while a set of six walnut low-back chairs by Sam Maloof is estimated at $50,000 to $70,000. A George Nakashima dining table is expected to bring $40,000 to $60,000.
The sale’s largest non-Lalanne highlight is The Boyd Family Memorial Window (The Falls), a late-19th-century Tiffany Studios window that has illuminated a Connecticut church for 125 years. Restored in the 1990s, it is estimated at $1.5 million to $2 million. Of the 128 lots in the sale, 18 were made by Tiffany Studios, giving the auction a strong historical spine as well as a market-facing one.
Taken together, the offerings suggest a market that continues to reward objects where sculpture, craft, and function meet — especially when the provenance is as vivid as a poolside commission in Houston.
