TheJakartaPost
Please Update your browser
Your browser is out of date, and may not be compatible with our website. A list of the most popular web browsers can be found below.
Just click on the icons to get to the download page.
Paris Ritz sells off its silver... and ashtrays
Change Size
This file photograph taken on January 11, 2018, shows part of the facade of The Ritz Paris Hotel in Paris. (AFP/Lionel Bonaventure)
H
istoric silver, crystal and ashtrays from the Paris Ritz hotel are to go under the hammer in the French capital in a three-day sale starting Sunday.
The mythic hotel on Place Vendome was a favorite of such icons as actress Audrey Hepburn, fashion designer Coco Chanel -- who spent part of World War II tucked up there with her lover, a German spy -- and the American writer Ernest Hemingway, who "liberated" its bar when the Allies retook the city.
More than 1,500 lots from bed linen to bathrobes and ashtrays from the Ritz Club, which are estimated to go between 100 and 150 euros ($168) apiece, will be sold off by the auction house Artcurial from Sunday to Tuesday.
Two years ago some of the hotel's historic furniture was sold off for 7.2 million euros -- seven times the estimate -- after a major refurbishment of the hotel.
Bidders from 53 countries competed for the pieces, many of which dated from its earliest era days at the turn of the 20th century under founder Cesar Ritz and the legendary French chef Auguste Escoffier.
This time the star attraction will be the 400 lots of its silver service as well as its vintage crystal, much of it from the famous "Hemingway Bar" named after the hard-drinking writer.
