Wynn Magazine - Las Vegas
Issue link: http://digital.greengale.com/i/660157
PhotograPhy © Christie's images Limited 2011 When a quartet of famous Chinese porcelain pieces—known as the Buccleuch vases—reaches its new home in Wynn Palace, it will have completed a journey spanning more than two centuries and thousands of miles. by Andrea Bennett Fr agile Beauty P acking and shipping four vases that have virtually no equal in the world is, as you might imagine, not a matter an art handler takes lightly. When a set of legendary vases from China's Jiaqing period (1796–1821) fitted with early-19th- century French ormolu journeys the mere six miles from its current location in the lobby at Wynn Macau to the Wynn Palace VIP registration area in June, the logistics involved will be nothing short of "intense," explains Wynn Design and Development's Director of Purchasing, Pamela Cyr. On moving day, a specialty fine-art mover and installer from Hong Kong will arrive with six employ- ees to de-install the vases, detach them from their ornate gilt-bronze mounts, secure them in the crates that origi- nally took them the 6,000 miles from London to Macau in 2011, and move them to the Cotai Strip. Flanked by heavy security, the art handlers will transport the vases to their new home, where the process will begin in reverse. "Even a short move is very complex, due to the value of the vases, the coordination needed, and the staff it takes to make the move happen," says Cyr, who managed their original move from Christie's in London. The four-foot-high vases, painted with Buddhist and Daoist emblems, with their 19th-century gilt-bronze han- dles and bases, are not ordinary parlor decoration. Purchased by Steve Wynn at the Christie's International "Exceptional" sale in London in 2011, they were the most expensive of 50 lots and set a world auction record for ormolu-mounted porcelain when Wynn paid $12.8 million for the set. But in fact they had been parlor decoration 54