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ART + DECORATION 78 F or artist Liz Marsh, Paris is a constant spark of inspiration. She worked there for six years, exporting antiques — her other passion — and leading tours throughout France. Now working in Houston, Marsh creates exquisite decoupage lamps using 18th-century French techniques. "Marie Antoinette and her ladies-in-waiting did decoupage as they sat around, clipping their Watteaus and Fragonards," Marsh says. Unlike the Queen of France, Marsh doesn't deface priceless paintings for her work, but she does use high- quality reproduced images from her vast collection of antique prints. Her Eden collection of lamps has a lavish garden of serpents, butterflies, and botanicals, all taken from prints discovered on travels. Her newest lamps derive from breathtaking 18th-century French copper engravings of parrots. Printed centuries ago on natural plant- fiber paper, the images are preserved in insanely vivid colors, she says. Each lamp is a labor-intensive work of art. Marsh painstakingly cuts detailed images and adheres them to the inside of mouth-blown glass cylinders. It takes as many as 50 coats of paint to achieve the luscious background colors. She hand-paints the paper and linen shades and has created vibrantly hued velvets to top her new collection of parrot lamps. Even the bases are hand-turned by local artisans. Liz Marsh lamps at Laura Lee Clark, lauraleeclark.com, and through the artist, lizmarshdesigns.com. Rebecca Sherman CITY OF LIGHT N ot every auction held at Christie's New York would inspire Nancy Marcus, Mercedes Bass, and Lynn Wyatt to open their homes for private dinners celebrating the event — or bring Lord Snowdon over from London to attend such dinners. But then, this isn't just another auction. On Wednesday, June 10, Christie's offers The Private Collection of Jayne Wrightsman, renowned collector and arts patron, and the wife of Charles Bierer Wrightsman, an oil executive who was in the oil business in Texas. Jayne developed a passion for collecting while decorating their oceanfront estate in Palm Beach and magnificent Manhattan home at 820 Fifth Avenue. She became an expert in 18th-century French decorative arts and European painting and donated a great BID FOR STYLE deal of her collection to The Metropolitan Museum of Art before her death last year. "She didn't want her colleections sitting in storage — she wanted them to be on view," says Capera Ryan, deputy chairman at Christie's. "And if they couldn't be on view, then they should be sold." One of the must-see lots is Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres' Odalisque (estimate $700,000 to $1 million), a smaller version of Ingres' Grand Odalisque. Other treasures include a Royal Louis XVI bois satiné table de café by Martin Carlin ($80,000 to $120,000) and a Louis XVI ormolu- mounted porphyry urn and cover ($200,000 to $300,000). The collection will be on view in New York beginning June 4. Proceeds from the sale will be donated to recipients including The Met and The Morgan Library & Museum. christies.com. Caitlin Clark Decoupage lamps by Liz Marsh Part of a set of four circa-1810 Empire chairs estimated at $8,000 to $12,000. Édouard-Henri-Théophile Pingret's Portraits de deux frères, ($30,000-$50,000) Jayne Wrightsman HORST P. HORST/CONE NAST VIA GETTY IMAGES