Dunhill ‘fancy shape’ lighter, salmon pink and cornflower blue, sold for £19,000 at Chiswick Auctions.
Found by a general valuer in a drawer during on a routine house call, this rare issue from c.1927 was given a cautious estimate of £500-800 to reflect some scars and surface abrasion to the salmon pink and cornflower blue enamel.
However, bidding before the sale on October 20 had reached £3000 and quickly escalated to £9000, at which point the contest came down to two parties bidding online. It was sold to what the auction house called “a serious international Dunhill collector” at a sum that with 26% buyer’s premium was just over £24,000.
The Art Deco ‘fancy shape’ lighters were available from 1927 in several shapes and a variety of colourways in both guilloche and opaque enamel. While marked to the underside for Dunhill London, the cases were made in the German jewellery centre of Pforzheim and the manual-winding movement in Switzerland.
An advertisement from the period suggests this particular model was priced at £14 10 shillings each.
Another example with electric blue and black enamel hammered at £5500 at Rowley’s in Newmarket in September 2015, while a similar lighter from the series with a silver case and hallmarks for London 1927 took £7500 at Eastbourne Auctions in June 2020.
More recently a collection of 24 Dunhill lighters from this period was sold by Aste Bolaffi in Turin in June this year when a ‘Unique’ Model B in engine turned 9ct gold hammered at €10,000 (£8500).
Chiswick Auctions’ lighter also surpasses its own record for an Alfred Dunhill aquarium table lighter – the £13,500 bid in April 2024 for a rare 4in (10cm) model decorated with a fox hunting scene.
Head of department John Rogers said: “The excitement around this lighter – a great objet de luxe – was truly enjoyable. Clearly a topic at the height of its collecting zeal, we are so pleased it will join a collection alongside more of these extremely rare enamel lighters.”
