Sotheby's to Auction Robert Isabell Trove

When he wasn't planning some of the most memorable parties in New York and in jet setters' playgrounds -- Caroline Kennedy's wedding, galas for the Metropolitan Museum of Art and New York City Ballet, birthdays for Bette Midler and Saul Steinberg, White House holiday parties for President Clinton -- Robert Isabell applied his meticulous design sensibilities to his home. With his passing in July, the experience of attending one of his legendary fetes can never be repeated, but Sotheby's is making it possible to own some of his collection of 20th century design, with an auction scheduled for December 17.

Isabell's domestic aesthetic explored combinations of nature, light, iron, and steel in both intimate and soaring spaces, in a Greenwich Village home that combined a former blacksmith's shop with a modern building. Formally, his design style incorporated French modernist and American studio, with later Pop and contemporary additions. One of his last acquisitions was "Nickel Couch" by Johnny Swing, made of metal and nickels. First shown at the Museum of Arts and Design in 2006, it will be the artist's first piece to be offered at auction (estimated at $15,000). The most valuable objects in the collection are post-war American and French. Examples from America's New Hope Studio include a sideboard, bar, and cabinet by Paul Evans, who used intricate metal facades in his designs (with estimates from the low to high five figures), and 15 lots of Harry Bertoia bronze sculpture. Objects by icons of French mid-century modernism include a bookcase by Jean Prouvé and lamps and sconces by Serge Mouille.

The auction is for the design collector more than the Isabell sentimentalist searching for remnants of the parties, which alas, featured extremely ephemeral beauty (acres of peonies, Old Master tableaux vivants). Even so, there are bound to a few Isabell clients or past revelers who stop by the public exhibit of the works December 12-16, if only to capture a glimpse of the interior life of the man whose job was to create beautiful public spectacles. But just as guests disperse after a party, so too will Isabell's objects scatter to the highest bidders. Proceeds from the sale will go toward restoring Oak Spring Garden Library and Greenhouses in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, which houses a library devoted to gardening, landscape design, horticulture, botany, natural history and travels.