Evidently, I just don't have the right "eye" to see such value.

Sign me up. I'll take one of each.

One of the lots will possibly go 6 figures.

One of the lots I have never understood why it has such a high value.

One of the lots I think is probably a relative bargain.

I won't specify which is which.

A guessing game?!

They can keep it, hey I have a bridge!

I do like the Finn Juhl chair. But why would/should production pieces have such high value - at least in the imagination of the individual who set the auction values?

It's not their imagination. Their auction estimates are very close to the hammer price, I watch the results a lot. They are based upon prior sales, and other factors. Remember these are the Low auction estimates.

However, I don't understand why the values of a couple of these pieces are so high, and consistently so.

This table, purchased by an anonymous individual at Christie's had a hammer price of $6.7 Million, with a total cost to the buyer of around $8M. More conventionally pretty, and much more rare.

Are these considered iconic pieces? Something industry trend-setting?

I remember a big, white oval hanging pendant thing, made of some kind of plasticy cloth. It's considered indicative of the 70s design or something like that .

We had it in our kitchen, then up in our rec room over the garage. I remember wondering why my mom liked it.

Are these such items? Because I sure don't know.

Love the Wegner chair. And nothing else.

We have a neighbor with a Michael Graves home. Let's just say thank goodness for the treeline. Oh and the place started rotting within a few years.

With such thin markets and relatively few trades (versus other type of assets), if a a few incremental buyers decide to start to collect, the price can jump. Not the value but the price ...

Out of curiosity I looked up the price of a new Chieftan chair, and it is very pricey at $13,900. If I had to choose, I would take the new one. I don't think most modernist furniture looks good in poor cosmetic condition.

You know Pal, you said something similar recently about preferring modern pieces be in pristine condition.

That brought to mind my biggest gripe about modern architecture. It is so unforgiving. Any blemish .... and face it, buildings are in a constant struggle with the elements .... and the look is ruined.

Assuming someone else is paying, I would happily take the new Chieftan chair. The desk is okay, but I wouldn't want it. I would very happily live with that Nakashima table forever. Seems like too much $$ though. The Wegner chair is just fine of course. I'll bet that the Paul Evans is the one that goes to six figures.

Just looked again, I have absolutely no idea which might go for the most, but please tell me it isn't the Memphis table and stool? But I could picture it in the home of some nouveau riche tycoon in Moscow.

It's a marketplace.
Things like this have no intrinsic value.
They are worth what buyers are willing to pay.
Often, their willingness is based on trend, and on expert opinion. And so markets are created.

My father worked with Harry Bertoia and Charles Eames in California in the 40s. When my mother was pregnant with me, Charlie and Ray gave them a pre-production bent plywood child's chair and footstool. I broke the chair when I was about 4, because the legs splayed too easily on hardwood floors. Very few of those chairs are left for that very reason.

In the late '60's, I thought it would be cool to decoupage a map onto the footstool.

Value of the two in original condition: lots.
Value of the footstool with the original finish spoiled on the top: not much.

I don't even like to think about the value of what my parents had from that era, but my father got sick, and my mother came back to her traditional world, and gave all those early Eames and Bertoia prototypes away.

I still have a pre-production bent plywood chair in original condition. Its value has see-sawed all over the place. I don't care. The chair and the ruined footstool are the only things I have left of my father's modernist aesthetic, and they're not going anywhere.

I am a HUGE Nakashima fan... father and daughter.

I met his daughter Mira and have seen several of her pieces in person... I'd like something of hers!

Interesting to see the price of the new Chief chair - makes it clear I won't have to choose one or the other. The new one does seem slightly different in design from the original - seems they are saving on the buttons (word?) on the chair back.

I wasn't aware there was any market for Memphis. I thought it was great fun while it was happening, although I was very young, and even then thought Wendell Castle showed much more artistry when he was a real woodworker (I had walked on his $2 million carved staircase every day one summer). I have some Memphisy totschkes in the basement--artisan, not mass market--and have looked everywhere for someplace to sell them. At lower ends, at least, there seems to be no awareness the movement ever existed.

although I was very young

hmmmppphhh.

I don't think there has Ever been a soft market for Wharton Esherick or Nakashima.

But the days of buying a George Nakashima-commissioned table from the original owner complete with receipt for $700. and paying $70,000 for it are over. Not that people will stop paying $70K, just that a new commission is much more expensive, and I don't quite see it hitting $700,000. Such a dramatic increase seems unlikely to me.

I talked to a dealer who said it is probably a better investment to commission your own piece from Mira.

If you want to invest in something where value is likely to increase, I would pick the Venturi Queen Anne chairs. $2000 a pop isn't so bad per chair, these chairs were not widely produced, I don't think, and Bob Venturi is 87. That chair isn't my favorite of the Knoll-post-Modern/Memphis assortment though.

i like the armed chairs, the paul evans piece and the nakashima...
i saw a great nakashima desk in a gallery this summer---don't remember exact price, but close to 50k---would love to have brought it home, but alas, i did not...

the carving/top on the christie's table is nice- but 8 million?? i would much rather choose a charity or educational institution if i was looking for something to do with my millions...

The guy who bought it was a billionaire, I don't think $8M was that big a deal to him. I doubt it was "Charity or table...Let's see....Table!" It was probably like me spending $800 or $80 on something. It will probably end up donated to a museum at some point anyway.

The Chieftan chair is cool but not for that price. I could make the George Nakashima Minguren I Side Table, I really do not get the price on that one.

The thing is Nobody can make a Nakashima table the way Nakashima did. The New Hope School woodworkers who work(ed) in his Studio make their own beautiful pieces but they are different, and amateur Not-kashima or Knockoff-ashima as I call it is invariably bad.

It's like people saying they could do drip paintings like Jackson Pollock. Sorry, but can't be done. Even he eventually could not do it.

I can recall some Not-kashima in shops in the area, although I haven't seen them in quite a while. Maybe I haven't been looking though. We have a piece made by Nakashima in the early 1970s. It's beautiful, and the Not-kashima furniture simply cannot compare to it in any way. jterrilynn, you should visit the Nakashima studio some time. I'd be interested in your reaction to the furniture.

I prefer their early 20th century auctions. Can't afford any of it but it's fun to peruse the catalog.

Lynxe, I had to look up where the studio is located as I would like to visit it sometime. I think that's what I need as although in pictures all the pieces are interesting and beautiful I just can not imagine spending that much but maybe that is due to the fact that it's not really my thing. Perhaps seeing the pieces in person would help me appreciate the work more (as is often the case).

I wouldn't give $5.00 for any of it...

. . . bidders whose top bids were $6 breathe a sigh of relief.

LOL!

With my luck, if I inherited this from my parents, I'd give it to Goodwill and never even know it was worth a dime!
LOL

I was at Rago today and saw the Wharton Esherick desk, the Paul Evans piece, the Michael Graves piece, and the Venturi chairs. The Esherick desk is stunning in person, and I say this even though it's not to my taste. I've never liked Paul Evans's furniture, and my reaction today was consistent with all my previous ones. The Venturi chairs were, frankly, hideous. Oddly enough, of those pieces, it was the Michael Graves piece that elicited my interest the most. I'm not saying I'd want to own it, or even that I liked it. But it certainly was eye-catching, even fun in a weird way. It's quite large, very bulky, taking up a lot more space than you'd think from pal's image there. As I looked at it, I was imagining some 22nd century Nevada showgirl-robot creature sitting at it and polishing her metal before a show.

The image of the Minguren table doesn't show the beautiful grain of the wood, nor does it convey how satin-smooth the finish is.

The Minguren pieces that are heavily burled and full of holes are generally not my favorite and for some reason that don't photograph nearly as well as his other pieces (to me). The tables always look a bit slanted.

I don't care for the Paul Evans pieces for Directional nearly as much as I like the studio pieces. Many of the studio pieces are also rather ugly but they are so complex in their ugliness that it makes them interesting to me.

I think the Esherick will achieve the highest price in this part of the Auction.

Post-Modernism/Memphis attracts a certain type of collector I think, but a lot of these pieces don't play well with others. They need a separate spot of their own.

I think this is the kind of stuff that you don't need to like it or it doesn't need to conform to your own personal taste but you have to appreciate these pieces for either their craftsmanship or because of the concept behind them.