A unique glass moth made for Tottenham Court Road Station in London by famed artist, Sir Eduardo Paolozzi, RA, is being sold at auction on Thursday.
The mural was created by the Leith born artist in 1983 and Moth is a part of it. It is estimated that the piece will sell for around £5,000 to £7,000.
This piece was not ever installed in the station as it did not fit the elevated site where it was supposed to go. The piece was gifted to David Lamb who worked for London Transport Architects department between 1974 and 1994, on his retirement. Now with his blessing it is to be sold by his family.
Paolozzi, born in Leith in 1924 to Italian parents, was an internationally known artist when London Regional Transport invited him to create this work for Tottenham Court Road station in 1979. A member of the project team had seen Paolozzi’s work on a mural in West Berlin.
The Tottenham Court Road mural was saved for posterity in 2015 after being threatened with demolition as part of the £400m Crossrail redevelopment of the site for the Elizabeth Line.
Lamb was also a designer who continued to work for London Transport as a consultant after London Transport Architects closed down in the late 1990s.
He explained: “Eduardo and I visited the glass works in Udine, in north eastern Italy, to discuss the project. I returned a number of times to check on progress.
“When the first stage of the work – the mosaics for the Central Line – arrived, the length was fine, but they were about a metre too high, so they had to be adapted on site.
“Work could only be carried out from midnight until about 4am and Eduardo didn’t want to go out at night to amend them, so he left it to me to make it all fit.
“I would do a normal day at work, as an architect for London Transport, then wander around the city until midnight, before going on site to do a kind of cut and paste to make the mosaic fit the space, catching the first train back home around 6am.
“I’ve always called the piece a butterfly/moth because I always think of it as a butterfly, with its bright colouring. But it was in fact a moth; depicting the night life of Soho and the environs of Tottenham Court Road.”
Simon Hucker is a Senior Specialist in Modern & Contemporary Art, based in London, who is dealing with the object as it prepares to be sold.
He said: “Sir Eduardo Paolozzi and Duncan Lamb got on together really well. They worked closely on the mural, visiting the mosaic factory in Udine in Italy together a couple of times.
“Paolozzi left the installation to Duncan, allowing him to cut and paste it as he saw fit, to get it to fit the space. Paolozzi didn’t want to work in the middle of the night, so Duncan would kick his heels after work until the tube shut and then went underground to work with the tilers. He made decisions on site, to cut and paste it to fit.
“There has literally been nothing else like this for sale at auction. It is unique. It’s not a study for the work, but an actual part of it. When you touch it, it’s like you are touching the wall of tube itself. Yet for a piece of public art, the Mosaic itself is very delicate and beautiful and the whole thing feels quite jewel-like.
“Paolozzi is a really important artist with an international following. He worked in so many different media and was brilliant in all of them, but I can’t think of any mosaics of his out there on the open market. This is a unique sale.”
