Classic chairs and copies can be cheaper online. John Price explains why
(Left to right) Eileen Gray's Bibendum chair can be bought for under £400; Mies van der Rohe's Barcelona chair and footstool can be yours for a touch over £500; The "heart" sofa by Per Weiss, a classic in the making for £399 (Jonathan Ford)
CAN’T sleep. So I’m lying in bed counting chairs when it dawns on me that I’ve gone off my rocker. You’d recognise it — a prized bentwood chair by Thonet. Well, a copy, actually, that came from a market in Bath years ago.
Classy? Absolutely. William Rees-Mogg, when he edited this newspaper, used to rock himself gently in one at our daily conferences.
We have a bit of a chair thing, my wife and I, so we were bound to move on from Thonet. For the past two decades and more we have been chasing 20th-century modern design icons, so we’ve touched bases — literally — with some of the best in the business from Alvar Aalto plywood stools to Rietveld’s Zig-Zag chair.
We must have owned 100 chairs over the years, counting ones we’ve passed on to friends and family or have chucked in a skip. We’ve still got about 50. An old favourite is Arne Jacobsen’s Series 7 chair. You’ll know it when I say that Christine Keeler famously adorned one. Where did they come from? The Keeler, as I call it, was 30 bob in Brick Lane. A few others were new, but most were “discovered” on pilgrimages to junk shops and street markets every weekend for years and years.
Hard work? Well, it takes time and dedication, but it is fun and can save you a fortune. A set of six 1940s stacking chairs designed by Lucian Ercolani, which my wife found through a friend in Stoke Newington, cost £30. Now Margaret Howell is doing reproductions at £195 each. I regret to say we gave four of ours away.
Collecting these must-have items for the home has suddenly got a lot easier and cheaper. The buzz at the recent annual International Furniture Fair in Milan (which sets the pace for future high street fashions) was not just what’s new, but what’s old, too. In particular, there is growing interest in masterpieces from the 1920s onwards that are coming out of licence.
Debbie Barnett, of Beecraft Classic Furniture, which specialises in selling upmarket furniture via the internet, says that the days when you would shop only at Heal’s or Conran to get prestige furniture are gone. “People are more design conscious now. They might go to these shops to see what’s around . . . but then they go on the net where they can buy identical items online for a fraction of the cost.”
Internet sales are expanding for two reasons, she says: shop overheads are huge and classics by architects and designers such as Le Corbusier, Mies van der Rohe and Charles and Ray Eames are available in the same materials and quality as the originals, at a fraction of the price.
The pose that turned the Anne Jacobsen "butterfly chair" into a cult object
ClassicFurniture4u is now selling the Corbusier two-seat sofa and matching armchair for about £1,000 — the same as we paid for just the chair 15 years ago. Corbusier’s black leather and steel recliner was almost £1,000 then. You can get it online now for under £300.
Mies van der Rohe chairs designed for his pavilion at the International Exhibition in Barcelona in 1929 are now cult objects seen in sleek apartments around the globe. The Barcelona chair will cost you £1,650 in Conran and an extra £895 for a matching footstool. Online you can get the pair for just over £500.
I’ve inspected the two: same quality leather, same polished stainless steel frame (not cheaper chrome), same number of straps, fastened with screws not rivets. I couldn’t spot the difference.
Now here’s a thing. One online retailer told me that, despite the huge price differential, the classics still fly out the door of the posh shops faster than the cut-rate retailers. Why? People are still wary of buying “blind” on the internet.
ClassicFurniture4u is getting round that by having cheaper “studio” showrooms away from high streets. It has a couple in London and new ones opening in Manchester and Leeds. They will also ship abroad. “People want to see the goods before they buy to know they are getting the real thing and real quality,” Barnett says. “It’s about creating confidence.”
A Google search for classic modern furniture gives a host of websites that serve as a mini tutorial in the subject. One of the best is the London Design Museum (www.designmuseum.org). It has an A to Z of 20th-century designers, including Marcel Breuer, Isamu Noguchi and Eileen Gray along with contemporary ones such as Philippe Starck and Ron Arad.
They are a way to start studying modern furniture without leaving . . . er, your armchair.
The Le Corbusier recliner in ponyskin. Top high street price, £900. Online, £399 — and every penny as good.
Mies van der Rohe Barcelona chair and footstool in chocolate hide. Wonderfully well made. At £504, the online price is a quarter of the top high street price.
Harry Bertoia wire “wing” chair. Only £250 online, £750 elsewhere.
Le Corbusier sofa. A classic. Online £479, about a third of the high street price.
The Danish “heart” sofa designed by Per Weiss. Luscious red and a whacky classic in the making for £399. Expect to pay double when it hits the high street later in the year.
