ST DUPONT, Paris - Gilt metal and red lacquer table lighter - Lot 73

There are souls who can't help but capture beauty. The desire to transcend the ephemeral is the birth of the collector's spirit.

A gold coin minted under Valentinian, rescued from the Roman Empire and seventeen centuries of oblivion. A Napoleonic artefact, still warm from a corporal's ambition for greatness. A bronze perfume burner carved under the Ming, where dragons and chimeras clash for eternity in the wisps of a vanished incense. A watch born from a Liberty twenty-dollar coin, as if time itself had wished to become a jewel.

These objects did not find themselves in the same hands by chance. They were called, recognized, loved - with that gentle, tenacious passion that is the hallmark of collectors: the intimate certainty that something beautiful deserves better than the world's indifference. In truth, they know, it's the objects that choose us.

Behind each lot in this sale, there is a look, a story. Sometimes a whole life. The particular taste of a man or a woman for a century, a material, a form - for the preserved perfection of 18th-century provincial goldsmiths, the melancholy grace of a Gallé vase, the timeless elegance of a fawn-colored Birkin placed there as a matter of course.

Today, these treasures resume their journey.

It's up to you to welcome them.

Exhibition on Friday March 20 from 9am to 5pm at Hôtel Bertin and the morning of the sale on Saturday March 21 from 10am to 12pm.