How Much for a Frank Gehry for Tiffany Torque Vase?

By Hilary Sterne

My friend Liz was intrigued by the mention of the Frank Gehry for Tiffany vase in a recent post, which prompted me to devote this post to telling its story. It was actually something that I exchanged a wedding gift for with the giver none the wiser. (As the former editor of Martha Stewart Weddings, I have a few thoughts about wedding gifts—the “cover your plate” rule is just gross, for instance. I got a cribbage set from a nephew and I adored it though I admit to never actually learning how to play. I also couldn’t now tell you what a “plate” cost at my wedding; it was a buffet with heirloom tomatoes and roasted corn and so I guess it depended on how much of those you heaped on your plate.)

Finding the right one

The original arts and crafts-y glass pitcher inside the original blue Tiffany’s box, while lovely and very much appreciated, wasn’t really my style, while the Frank Gehry vase I spotted when I went to get what I thought would be store credit made me take another look.

Frank Gehry, whose muscular designs include the Guggenheim Bilbao and the Walt Disney Concert Hall, has his admirers and detractors, and while his building near my apartment is not my favorite, looking a bit too much like a 70s light fixture to me, the vase, which apparently the building inspired, I thought was striking. It now sits on my small dining room table, a converted West Elm parson’s desk I made a bit bigger and more practical for eating by adding a glass top to it. (The Bellini chairs that surround it, floor samples bought for a song from Design Within Reach, take up hardly any room at all and are plastic so easy to clean.)

But back to the vase. I have used it to display all kinds of flowers and the chunky, sculpted lines always work to set them off beautifully. The only complaint I have is that all the angles make the interior hard to clean. Ibex berries, lilacs, forsythia—all have had their turn in the Frank Gehry wedding vase. I never gave it much thought until I Googled it looking for a photo I could use in the original blog post that so intrigued Liz. Which is when I discovered it’s been discontinued and that vintage ones are selling at places like Sotheby’s for up to $2250, ten times the price it was when I purchased it, as you'll see in this youtube video.

A sense of validation

Of course this surprised and delighted me. I must have excellent taste! Confirmed by Sotheby’s! Although by that argument, the rubber dollies featured on Antiques Roadshow now worth a New York parking space say the same thing about their owner. It’s a familiar tale, though, never mind the object in question and how dubious or not its worth. All those stories about people finding staggeringly valuable stuff at the local Goodwill are always at the top of your newsfeed because it’s a rags are riches story that you just might be able to repeat if we’re lucky and discerning and willing to go through all the SteriLite bins in the garage or to take a chance on a dusty, discarded Roman bust.

 

The eye of the beholder

Unlike the vintage photography I’ve collected over the years, the vase was not something I ever expected to appreciate in value, and, in fact, I treat it rather casually, banging it around the sink while scrubbing all those stubborn crannies. It’s a bit like the signed bound galleys of Infinite Jest Liz once gave me that are now worth almost as much as the vase (though there may be a #metoo depreciation at this point.) Who knew?

It’s always strange to put a price on taste, to commodify what is really so uncommodifiable. There’s no accounting for it, as they say, except when there is, literally, accounting for it.

Of course, I’d like the vase if it was worth ten dollars—it will always have its place of pride on the parson’s table where no visitor to our tiny apartment can help but notice it. I suppose I just now have to treat it as if it’s worth a whole lot more.

Updated to say I've learned more: "from The Gehry Collection unveiled on Rodeo Drive in the Beverly Hills boutique on March 26, 2006, which was 3 years in the making and involved working with nine Tiffany designers. The Torque Collection was one of six themes used in designing the line. Inspired by the architect's sculptural buildings' forms, the openwork china is one of Gehry's personal favorites from the collection because of the "basic grid pattern:and "simple but commanding form