How stylish! Top-selling Design Auction of international format at the Dorotheum
C1 Chair by Verner Panton
Poly-COR-Chair by Luigi Colani
The auction room filled to capacity, numerous written bids, and enthusiastic telephone bidders: The Dorotheum Vienna's Design Auction on 13th November 2007 left collectors from all over the world breathless.
A Spanish telephone bidder breathed a sigh of relief when he was able to decide the bidding contest for a rare early Red/Blue Chair by Gerrit Rietveld, an icon of the De-Stijl movement, in his favour. Designed in 1918 and made between 1919 and 1921, this absolutely timeless design classic provides an excellent example of the Dutch group's abstract and reductive formal vocabulary; it was sold for 49.100 Euro (Cat. No. 50).
Simple, classic lines, fine materials, and superior workmanship also distinguished a rare cabinet by a private student of Koloman Moser, Eduard Wimmer-Wisgrill (1882-1961). Designed in 1933, the cabinet was manufactured by the "Wiener Werkstätte" (Vienna Workshops), where, in 1907, the artist and designer had founded the new fashion department. It dates to three years after Wimmer-Wisgrill's participation in the famous "Werkbund" exhibition and was sold to a North American bidder for 41.800 Euro, more than twice the original estimate (Cat. No. 13).
Two daringly formed, experimental chairs likewise found new 'possessors': Consisting of a hemispherical bowl-seat resting on a cone, the original C1 Chair by Verner Panton, was designed in 1959 for Plus-Linje/Denmark (24.700 Euro, Cat. No. 5) while a bright red Poly-COR-Chair by Luigi Colani, limited to a prototype run of ten copies owing to the difficulty involved in its manufacture, rose to a remarkable 21.000 Euro (Cat. No. 256).
A French design collector paid out 27.100 Euro for a set of six „Latest News“ chairs by Barnaba Fornasetti, using patterns employed by his father, Piero, in the nineteen-fifties (Cat. No. 126). Dating to the same period but highly contemporary in appearance, the globe of the architect and decorator Jaques Adnet saw bidding rise to 24.700 Euro (Cat. No. 192). Captivating in its architectural clarity, a rare wooden dinner table designed around 1942 by the Italian Luigi Caccia Dominioni will in future grace a German collection (€ 27.100, Cat. No. 139).
All taken with all – including the sale of a spectacular Hani Rashid chandelier, a prototype for the Masterpiece Collection of Zumtobel Lighteriors (€ 138.400, Cat. No. 176) – this auction turned out to be the Dorotheum design auction with the highest turn-over to date.
Press: Mag. Doris Krumpl, Tel +43 1/515 60-406, doris.krumpl@dorotheum.at
