When a custom-designed dining table made in 1952 by Danish cabinetmaker Peder Moos was auctioned at Phillips London in October 2015 for £602,500, ($1.3 million), more then quadruple the presale estimate of £150,000–250,000 ($227,000–379,000) and a world record for Nordic design, it signaled a shift in what had been a steady, but not necessarily exciting category. Some 60-odd years after its emergence on the international scene, the market for Scandinavian postwar design is growing beyond a niche category and showing signs of maturity, such as a clear distinction between great and good pieces and a growing separation between connoisseurs and mere buyers.The international market for Scandinavian design emerged after World War II, when postwar prosperity led Americans to look abroad for new modern design, and they found it in the neutral countries where factories were undamaged, and people were eager to export their wares. In the 1950s, House Beautiful magazine raved about Scandinavian design as a warm and accessible alternative to Bauhaus-born steel and glass; the exhibition “Design in Scandinavia” toured museums in two dozen cities; and Bloomingdale’s and other major department stores staged Scandinavian design events. Americans flocked to Copenhagen’s Den Permanente and Illums Bolighus for modern furniture that was a pendulum-swing away from their parents’ stodgy Colonial and continental antiques. Danish Modern became the latest fashion, with names like Hans Wegner and Finn Juhl high on everyone’s must-have lists, while dozens of other designers offered less distinctive yet still attractive teak and rosewood furniture. After Georg Jensen and George Tanier debuted in New York in 1949, Scandinavian specialty stores opened in cities throughout America, and a market was made. As Evan Snyderman, cofounder of New York–based R & Company, notes, “In the 1950s, Danish design went out to the world in mass quantities.”Several decades later, those early acquisitions began to surface on the secondary market, and savvy dealers like Vance Trimble, also of New York, R & Company, and others traveled abroad to hunt for untapped sources of Nordic treasure. The market gathered steam by 2000, and Scandinavian furniture has since been part of all major design sales, with Phillips in London, Wright in Chicago, and Bruun Rasmussen in Copenhagen taking the lead. As more dealers started featuring the category, the market for it exploded, and new-money collectors jumped at the chance to buy furniture to complement their fine art—at prices that were bargains compared to those paid for most categories of antique furnishings and such modern styles as Art Deco. “They bought what their decorators recommended, and paid big prices for design furniture,” says Trimble. Early on, as the category was still being defined, some clients, with little real knowledge about what they were buying, later re-consigned their acquisitions to auction, where they failed to gain higher prices, and sometimes lost value. Though many of these early collectors didn’t educate themselves extensively, Trimble believes this is changing as the current market is focusing on buyers who know what they’re looking for, and helping them to find it.Wright put a Scandinavian piece on the cover of its very first catalog, a modern design sale in June 2000. The chandelier by Finnish designer Paavo Tynell sold for $8,625. Just six years later, a similar Tynell piece at the house brought an impressive $32,400. Since then, Wright has held semiannual Scandinavian-only sales. And since 2013 Piasa has run dedicated Scandinavian sales, as well as single-designer events for Axel Salto, Josef Frank, and Moos. Artcurial held its first Scandinavian sale in May 2015, while Sotheby’s includes Scandinavian objects in its 20th-century and design auctions, where it’s a solid niche market, as it is for Los Angeles Modern Auctions (lama) and Rago of Lambertville, New Jersey.Beginning with a November 2011 Nordic design sale in London, Phillips moved the market to another level with annual sales that set sights on the top of the market. The sale, which brought in £2,256,200 ($3,558,027), was curated by noted New York architect Lee F. Mindel, who characterized it as “a museum show that surpassed anything we could have imagined.” The top lot was a world-record-setting Poul Henningsen Spiral wall light, circa 1955, which went for £253,250 ($399,375), handily outstripping its £150,000 estimate. All of the succeeding sales held each fall have been meticulously curated, and the results have been exceptional. Their October 2015 sale earned £5,199,644 ($7,879,720) and set four world records. The Moos table broke the previous record set by a Finn Juhl Chieftain chair from 1949, which brought £422,500 ($671,775) at Phillips London in September 2013. Of the chair, Alexander Payne, worldwide director of design, said, “It’s a master class in cabinetmaking, architecture, and material.” Other record sales included a Wegner prototype armchair that earned £122,500 ($194,775), a Flemming Lassen armchair at £98,500, ($156,615), and a Moos worktable for the same amount. According to Payne, the sale scheduled for last month was even more selective. “We decided to look for quality over quantity; when you find great works, you want to make the most of them.”The high point for Scandinavian design at Sotheby’s was the June 2016 single-owner sale of works collected by the New York–based Wyeth showroom, which featured 28 lots of Scandinavian design and saw the auction house’s most expensive sales in that category to date. Top lots included five Wegner pieces, among them a rare circa-1953 easy chair that sold for $100,000 (est. $60–80,000), an executive desk that went for $87,500 ($50–70,000), and another hard-to-find chair for the same amount. This peak, however, stands in contrast to several sales that failed to meet expectations, including Piasa’s Scandinavian Design sale, held last February. “The market appreciated a huge amount in the last several years, so it’s natural that it levels off,” says Wright of the dip, while Trimble notes that such a softening is in line with patterns seen in other markets as serious buyers emerge.Home base for this market is understandably where the designs originated: Nordic auction houses Bruun Rasmussen and Bukowskis of Stockholm have been selling the category longer than anyone else, have more of it to sell, and often more of the top-level works, consigned by Scandinavian and American owners who purchased directly from the original sources, and understood and appreciated the difference between hand-crafted and mass-produced goods. Both houses now sell to an international clientele, as dealers and collectors watch their offerings with eagle eyes and open purses. And for the right lots, “prices can go crazy,” says Peter Kjelgaard, head of design sales at Bruun Rasmussen. In September 2014, the house sold Lassen’s Tired Man chair (of which only about 50 were ever made) for 1.42 million DK ($246,938) (est. 500,000 DK, $87,000), and a second Lassen chair for 900,000 DK ($156,510). In addition to the auction houses, Nordic dealers like Dansk Møbelkunst in Copenhagen and Paul Jackson in Stockholm cater to a broader market of international buyers and collectors.In the maturing market, a growing body of knowledgeable buyers and discriminating collectors are now creating strong demand for the best pieces. When asked what constitutes “best,” dealers and auction houses agree that it’s the earlier works, mostly from Denmark, by designers who partnered with cabinetmakers in the Danish Cabinetmakers Guild, which from 1927 to 1966 staged annual exhibitions of new designs. Made with skills that were honed and passed down in a centuries-old tradition in Denmark, these represented the epitome of modern design meshed with superb craftsmanship. Famous partnerships included Finn Juhl and Niels Vodder, Kaare Klint and Rud Rasmussen, and Hans Wegner and Johannes Hansen.Spurring the most heated competition are the unique pieces crafted entirely by hand, or those made in limited quantities. That includes work by individuals like Moos, who crafted all his own designs. Among the top-of-the-list names are early master Klint, who trained most of the cabinetmakers at the Furniture School of the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, and his follower Ole Wanscher. Rasmussen still fabricates a few of their designs, but many exist only in the early iterations. Also interesting to buyers is furniture by Lassen, Jacob Kjær, and Frits Henningsen, whose unusual designs—Trimble says he still comes across Henningsen pieces he’s never seen before—include the often-published but seldom seen 1939 high-back easy chair with leather upholstery and cabriole legs. Provenance adds value to pieces with direct connections to the maker, for instance, some-thing owned by the designer, their family, or their friends. In general, works made before 1950 are more desirable, with the most sought-after combination being a seating piece of rosewood in original leather upholstery, with the rich patina that comes with age and use.Marie-Louise Høstbo of Dansk Møbelkunst also mentions lesser-known designers whose stock is going up, like Ejner Larsen, Aksel Bender Madsen, Helge Vestergaard Jensen, and Palle Suenson, although it’s likely to be a while before these designers make any mark outside of Denmark. Meanwhile, it’s getting harder to sell the second- and third-tier offerings: good-quality furniture by manufacturers whose production was far smaller than American factories, but still far exceeded that of the cabinetmakers’ workshops or artisan studios. Demand still holds for Alvar Aalto and Wegner, possibly the best-known Nordic names, but prices are relatively modest for the pieces that remain in production, a situation faced by many midcentury American mass-produced designs. On the other hand, even works bypassed by collectors are likely to remain a staple for buyers who want furniture to use. As Snyderman says, “Scandinavian design is always going to be desirable because it’s so user-friendly.”The more modern of the Scandinavian designers, Arne Jacobsen and Poul Kjærholm in particular, worked with manufacturers as opposed to cabinetmakers (Jacobsen with Fritz Hansen and Kjærholm with E. Kold Christensen), so more of their designs were produced, while the quality level remained uniformly high. Both have steady markets, though demand is greatest for pieces made in limited numbers, as is the case for much of Kjærholm’s work. The same situation holds for Jacobsen, whose Egg and Swan chairs remain in production to this day.Categories outside of furniture are also in demand. In lighting, the star is Danish master Poul Henningsen, who dominates the market with multiple versions of his Artichoke lamp, which he began designing in the mid 1920s. Exceptional custom pieces, like Henningsen’s record-setting Spiral lamps, also bring six-figure prices. The market for light designer Verner Panton has been slow because his most distinctive fixtures, like the large Fireball lamps, are increasingly hard to find. “I wish I could buy back some of those we sold 10 years ago,” laments Snyderman.The past few years have seen rising interest in flat-weave Swedish carpets from the workroom of Märta Maas-Fjetterström, and designs by her and Barbro Nilsson can bring top dollar. The record Nilsson, from 1948, sold at Phillips London in September 2013 for £92,500 ($148,305) and the top Maas-Fjetterström brought £122,500 ($206,081) at Phillips London in April 2014.When it comes to ceramics, Denmark’s Axel Salto, whose top designs bring six figures, beats all comers, with unique hand-crafted pieces whose prices have been escalating as supplies become scarcer. Though Salto is thought to have made thousands of objects during his lifetime, this included simple things like ashtrays as well as his coveted sprouting or budding sculptures. Bruun Rasmussen sold many at the high end several years back, but as demand increased, supply dried up, with the best pieces in private collections, where they’re likely to remain. Kjelgaard says, “We used to have 10 pieces in a sale, now we’re lucky to have one!” Phillips London’s September 2012 auction heads the source list of top Salto lots with a 1944 budding-style vase that brought £373,250 ($606,195), well over three times its high estimate. According to Dansk Møbelkunst, there is also interest and steady sales in Swedish ceramics by Berndt Friberg and Wilhelm Kåge, but nothing that comes close to Salto in price.Altogether, the market for Scandinavian design is in pretty healthy shape. Despite the abundance of middle-range merchandise on offer, the significant point to note is that prices for the best pieces stand at a higher starting point than in the past. Yet as Richard Wright, founder of Chicago’s Wright auction house, points out, “It’s a category with great value for average collectors. Many good designs sell for under $5,000.” Searching “Scandinavian Design” on 1stdibs turns up more than 8,000 lots from dozens of dealers—all types of objects at a variety of price points, most of them within the range Wright indicates or below. At the other end of the spectrum, art- collecting connoisseurs will continue to pay big-ticket prices for rare pieces. “It’s a younger market, but these sensational works are getting close to or similar prices,” says Payne, comparing the category to that of traditional antiques. “Scandinavian design sits alongside the objects of other nations that are sources of great decorative art.”
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