THE OTHER GIACOMETTI

Diego Giacometti sat happily in the shadow of his celebrated sculptor-artist brother Alberto, but his own cast bronze furniture is incredibly sought after by connoisseur collectors – as one piece proved recently when it set a new world record at Christie’s

- Caroline Wheater

Lady Mercia Harrison, the widow of British actor Sir Rex Harrison, first saw Diego Giacometti’s playful bronze furniture, spun with plants, trees and animals, at a Zurich cocktail party in the 1970s. ‘They were so beautiful I started to cry. There was something so joyous about them,’ recalls the art lover, who is now in her nineties. She asked for the maker's telephone number, but Diego was reticent about meeting up - it was widely known that he struggled to meet deadlines, and turned down many clients eager to buy his pieces. Unabashed, Lady Mercia, who had collected Pop Art since the 1960s, paid him a visit at his studio in Montparnasse, Paris. When he opened the door she said to him: ‘I am Mercia Harrison, would you like to have lunch with me?’ He was so taken aback that he agreed.

That lunch was the beginning of a friendship that lasted until Diego’s death in 1985, aged 82. As one of his trusted clients (Bunny Mellon, wife of American philanthropist Paul Mellon, was another), Lady Harrison was able to buy pieces direct from his studio, guaranteeing their authenticity. At Christie’s in Paris last December, she consigned some of these pieces to the Design sale — a pair of Têtes de Lionnes armchairs with leather seats, c1975; two occasional tables from 1980 - one featuring bats, the other birds and frogs; and most prominently, a console,