The £45 table that could be worth thousands
Jessica Doyle discovers how contemporary furniture can eventually become a valuable antique
As bank holiday activities go, a trip to Ikea is right up there with repainting the spare room and staining the garden fence. Hordes of us will walk through its doors this weekend (and, no doubt, walk out again, several hours later, having spent a small fortune on plates, candles and picture frames that we didn’t know we needed until we got lost somewhere between lighting and small storage). But how many are aware that, amid the Billy bookshelves, tableware and sheepskin rugs, there may be a valuable future antique?
According to experts at the art and antiques search site Barnebys (barnebys.co.uk), the humble Lövbacken side table, recently reintroduced and currently available for £45, could be worth as much as £5,000 in the next 20 years.
“We frequently see very popular products of the past getting the most recognition at auctions, as they become future antiques in their own right,” says the site’s founder Pontus Silfverstolpe. “In recent years, there have been a significant number of examples where a designer’s ideas on both beautiful and functional everyday life items have attracted collectors, interior designers and trendsetters all over the world. Many of tomorrow’s antiques could in fact be found in major furniture chains, both on a luxury scale and an affordable one.” In the case of Ikea’s Lövbacken, the three-legged, leaf-shape table, originally designed in 1956 and named Lövet, was the company’s first piece of flat-pack furniture (conceived almost by chance when its creator, Gillis Lundgren, couldn’t fit it into his car and had to saw off the legs). After it went out of production, original versions were reportedly selling for thousands at Swedish auction houses, which prompted its reintroduction at Ikea stores five years ago.
The table has just been given another revamp with new materials as
‘Many of tomorrow’s antiques can now be found in high-street furniture chains’
part of Ikea’s Re-imagined Classics collection of limited-edition pieces, launched to celebrate the company’s 75th anniversary, which will be rolled out over the next few months. Others include the Järpen armchair (renamed Räane), a wire armchair conceived in 1983 by Danish designer Niels Gammelgaard, who gave himself the challenge of designing a comfortable chair without fabric or padding. It has been fetching up to £2,000 at auction – a substantial uplift on the £45 it will be sold for here from October.
According to Jared Sager, Ikea UK’S head of collections, “In recent times, we’ve seen a selection of Ikea’s most iconic designs become sought-after collectables in auction houses across the world, commanding prices 10 times higher than their launch price. We believe the demand for these items on the second-hand market is subject to Ikea’s Democratic Design principles, where we work with designers to develop furniture with quality that’s built to last.”
Silfverstolpe credits the rise in value of such products to an increase of interest in midcentury design about 20 years ago, which saw demand for pieces in that style, whether or not they originally had a high price tag, or were the work of a known designer.
In the case of the Lövbacken, “Not all Ikea furniture is high quality, but this is a sophisticated table; it has quality in the material and the design,” he says. “It’s very typical of the midcentury style, and it’s light, which is what a lot of people are looking for.”
But if flat-pack isn’t your thing, there are other pieces now widely available that could be worth a substantial amount more in future. “When it comes to ‘design classics’,” says Silfverstolpe, “they must have quality in terms of design as well as material as well as being innovative and typical for its time.”
Take the Tulip table, Eero Saarinen’s classic design for Knoll from 1957, which he created as a solution for the “ugly, confusing, unrestful world” and the “slum of legs” that he observed beneath other tables. Its elegant, pedestal design and marble top have been a mainstay of the minimalist interior ever since – and a much copied one at that. The real thing will set you back at least £3,000 for a dining table, but, says Silfverstolpe, it’s likely to double in price over the next two decades. Stalwarts of the midcentury era when the idea of design classics took hold – the Ercol 206 chair, or Ladderax shelving are both sought-after on ebay and potentially worth a lot more in future. Similarly, there is a market in ceramics too – discontinued geometric Sixties pottery is becoming increasingly collectable, and according to the auction house Cheffins (cheffins. co.uk), Eighties ceramics is a category currently on the rise. Lighting can also be a good way to invest in a future collectable. Kartell’s baroque plastic Bourgie table lamp, available from £242 at Heal’s in various colours, is already a classic. Introduced in 2004, it was created by the Italian designer Ferruccio Laviani, whose connection with the Memphis movement (very much in vogue again) can be seen in its postmodern style. It makes a playful addition to an interior, and in Silfverstolpe’s opinion, could be worth as much as £4,500 in 20 years. Other lighting brands to keep an eye on include Artemide, which was established in 1960 and has gained a reputation for working with designers on lamps and pendants that will stand the test of time. Its Tolomeo collection, by Michele de Lucchi, is a favourite of interior designers, while more recent collaborations have involved the Shanghai design duo Neri & Hu (ones to watch), whose NH1217 lamp (£155, nest.co.uk) is a timeless design in blown glass and brass. Of today’s high-street collections, the respected designer Bethan Gray has teamed up with Anthropologie on a new range including chairs and tables way below her usual prices, and H&M launched its first ever furniture collection yesterday, by Swedish designer Mattias Chrisander. Who knows, some of these pieces might just be the collectables of the future.