Lalique crystal car mascot found in Co Meath

A rare Lalique crystal car mascot has turned up during a house clearance in Co Meath and will go under the hammer at Oliver Usher Auctioneers in Kells on Tuesday at 5pm.

René Jules Lalique, who died in 1945, was a famous French glass designer best-known for his Art-Deco vases.

In the 1920s and 1930s, he designed a range of crystal car mascots made to display on the front of luxury motor cars.

The first Lalique glass mascot – mounted on a base which could be screwed on to the bonnet of a car – was commissioned by the Citroen company in France in 1925 and featured an image of five horses for the car model ‘5CV’.

Subsequent versions depicted various bird and animal forms (including a horse, a fox, a greyhound, an owl, a peacock and a boar); a shooting star; and, nude figures.

Two of the rarest Lalique mascots were ‘Chrysis’ (a female nude figure leaning backward) and Vitesse (a nude leaning forward towards the wind). Collectors need to be wary as counterfeit versions often appear for sale. The originals are marked on the base with ‘R. LALIQUE’.

It is not known precisely how many were produced and they were expensive to buy at the time – costing about £20 each in the 1920s.

The mascots are now very collectible and are greatly sought-after by vintage car enthusiasts and collectors of Art Deco. But many were chipped and damaged so examples in good condition can fetch high prices. Auctioneer Oliver Usher said a Lalique ‘Ram’s Head’ mascot (known in French as ‘Tête De Bélier’ and introduced in 1928) was found in Co Meath which “proves that there are some rare items still to be found in house clearances”.

The auction estimate is €1,000-€1,500.

Record price

At an auction in England earlier this year at Bonham’s, which specialises in this niche category of collecting, a Lalique ‘Ram’s Head’ sold for

£3,000 (€3,747).

But the rarest of the Lalique car mascots (known to US collectors as ‘hood ornaments’) is the extremely coveted ‘Renard’ (fox) – one of which sold at a Bonhams auction in California two years ago for a world record price of $338,500.