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From the April issue of Art + Auction.

by Judd Tully

Few markets have rocketed to maturity as quickly as that of modern design. Over the past five years, and last year in particular, six-figure prices have been turning up more frequently, and theres even a new, multimillion-dollar record to beat. Driving this burgeoning field is a heady confluence of buyers, from contemporary art collectors, interior decorators and architect advisers to a younger breed of fashion-conscious consumers picking up on the trend, willing to pay top dollar for such postwar stars as Carlo Mollino, George Nakashima, Isamu Noguchi, Charlotte Perriand and Jean Prouvé, and contemporary standouts Ron Arad, Fernando and Humberto Campana, Zaha Hadid and Marc Newson.

The architects of the design boom were strategic auction house specialists at Christies, Phillips de Pury & Company, Sothebys, Wright, Rago and Los Angeles Modern Auctions, who cultivated buyers and promoted postwar design as a viable collecting area that could complement contemporary art and photography holdings. A handful of forward-thinking galleries in Paris and New York, including Phillipe Jousse, Kreo, Anthony Delorenzos 1950 Gallery and Patrick Seguin, have also been critical to the rise of this field.

I dont know how Tiffany and Art Deco did last year, says Peter Loughrey, founder of Los Angeles Modern Auctions, but modern design exploded and really gained an international, more mainstream audience. lamas first sale dedicated to design, held in October 1992, realized $94,000; its most recent, this past December, brought $1.5 million. The houses total for the year was $3.3 milliontwice what it was in 2004. The price points in my field dont scare people like they used to, Loughrey notes.

Witness the astounding record set at Christies New York last June, when a trestle-leg table by Mollino, 1949, sold for $3.8 million (est. $150200,000).

Clearly people are more comfortable spending, says Richard Wright. Thats a big factor. Sales at his Chicago auction house totaled $17 million in 2005, a 61 percent jump from the previous year. In December a unique Noguchi table from 1948, made of a marble slab, birch and steel (est. $7090,000), hit $630,000, an artist record. Wright was so stunned by the figure, he says, I actually stopped at the podium after it sold and told the crowd in the auction room that the Noguchi sold for more than my entire first auction back in 2000. Wright sold his first six-figure lot in June 2004, when Harry Bertoias steel-wire prototype chair, circa 1952 (est. $100150,000), fetched $118,000.

People are starting to understand that spaces can be inhabited not only by great art but also by great furniture and objects, says Lee Mindel, an architect, designer and adviser in New York. Mindel, who was the underbidder on the Mollino table, says 20th-century design has become the new blue Chippendale. James Zemaitis, director of Sothebys 20th-century design department and a former specialist at Phillips, agrees. No collector under the age of 40, unless born into a family with a longtime Americana collecting tradition, wants anything other than 20th-century design.

The first stand-alone auction in the field took place in London, at Bonhams in 1991, but the watershed moment occurred in New York, at Christies East in November 1999. Though hardly staggering by todays lofty standards, the sale of some 135 lots tallied $1.8 million, a figure unheard of at the time. The top 3 lots passed the $100,000 mark: an upholstered armchair by Mollino, 1952 (est. $5070,000), sold for $129,000; a 1948 Noguchi Cloud-Form sofa, with the same estimate, brought $107,000; and a unique Charles and Ray Eames abstract, molded-plywood sculpture, 1943 (est. $80,000120,000), soared to a record $365,500.

The following year, Christies included a handful of pieces by Shiro Kuramata, Marc Newson, Verner Panton, Gaetano Pesce and others in its contemporary art evening sales in May and November. All of the decorative lots sold, and a few records were set. Newsons extraordinary Lockheed Lounge, 1985 (est. $4050,000), one of an edition of 10 fabricated in aluminum and fiberglass, sold for a record $105,000 in the May sale. Remarkably, another chaise from the same edition had appeared in a 20th-century decorative arts sale at Christies London the previous May and failed to sell at half the price, demonstrating the cross-marketing potential of design in a higher-profile, contemporary art context. (Several experts consulted for this article noted that if another Lockheed Lounge came to auction today, it would likely fetch over $1 million.)

Despite its success, Christies crossover experiment was halted after just two seasons. According to New York dealer Philippe Ségalot, who initiated the idea as head of Christies contemporary art department, the hybrid sales were a casualty of management infighting. I was told to stop, says Ségalot, who still bristles at the memory. I feel we played a role in the rise of the field, and Im very proud of that. We were proven right.

But apart from extraordinary prices for rare pieces like the Mollino at Christies, the postwar and contemporary design market was long resistant even to six figures, with plenty of options in the $10,000 to $30,000 range. Then, at the end of 2000, the market began to rise. Phillips, for example, sold a circa 1953 Franco Campo and Carlo Graffi table (est. $5070,000) for $134,000 in December 2001. Suddenly we were getting this interest in the market, says Alexander Payne, director of the 20th- and 21st-century design department at Phillips. We had the blue-chip buyer, the contemporary art -collector, the museum, the gallery and the contemporary design collector all pitching against one another, which obviously drove the prices up.

Payne joined Phillips in 1999, around the same time that chairman Simon de Pury was aggressively promoting the crossover between contemporary art, photography and design. For a long time, there had been very limited distribution for major 20th-century designers and only a few dealers specializing in contemporary material, de Pury recalls. But design was appealing to contemporary art collectors, and given this strong overlap in interest, I felt it would be worth developing crossover sales. Weve seen that this was exactly the right strategy. Without significant competition from Christies or Sothebys, Phillips emerged as the hip New York venue for buying and selling design. So successful was Phillipss program that in the summer of 2003, Zemaitis was poached by Sothebys to revitalize its 20th-century design program in New York, which it had deemed too conservative to capture a share of the market heat. (The following year, Christies also raided the Phillips talent pool, hiring Philippe Garner, Joshua Holdeman and Carina Villinger to transform its New York departments of 20th-century decorative arts and photography.)

Although Zemaitiss arrival at Sothebys ended the long reign of noted design specialist Barbara Deisroth (who is now a private consultant), he quickly jazzed up the department and played a big role in the auction houses $19.5 million design sales in December 2003. That total included $4.7 million for the collection of fashion designer Wolfgang Joop and $7.5 million for Ludwig Mies van der Rohes Farnsworth House, which sold to the National Trust for Historic Preservation. A piece from the Joop sale, an Alexandre Noll mahogany armchair, 1947 (est. $100150,000), sold for $680,000, then a record for postwar design.

Payne says much of the increased awareness has to do with moving into a new century. For a few years, museums and curators have been considering what important design had been done in the previous 50 to 60 years. Collectors have been making similar judgments, snapping up such iconic works as a Prouvé Trapèze table from the 50s (est. $4060,000), which brought $447,200 last September at Sothebys New York, and a Perriand table with six stools, 1960 (est. €120180,000; $142213,000), which fetched €247,200 ($297,000) in December at Christies Paris.

So is the rising design market following the skyrocketing contemporary art sector, whose buyers are unfazed by bigger numbers? For contemporary art collectors, theres no such thing as paying too much for a great chair, says Zemaitis. Going into an auction, if they feel its reasonably priced and then realize, Oh, my God, there are only 10 or 15 of these Noguchi rudder stools left, theyll think, $10,000 or $15,000 is nothing for this. And so we keep getting multiples of the high estimate.

Theres a direct correlation between the rise of the art market and the rise of the decorative art market, says Wright. But unlike some of his competitors, he is not convinced that contemporary collectors are dominating the design market. That makes a nice sound bite, but I think its relatively rare, he says. The people driving the market are pretty focused on decorative arts. I would put decorators as a more important force than art collectors.

Another key factor is the material coming up for sale. Zemaitis observes that mass-produced pieces by Charles and Ray Eames, which defined buying activity just five years ago, have fallen sharply in price. People realized that all the moms and dads in New Jersey have an Eames Storage Unit in their basement, he says.

Once the infatuation with everything Eames died down, the market gradually turned to rare prototypes, limited production pieces and, more recently, small editions by contemporary designers. In December, for example, Sothebys sold a Teddy Bear chair by the Campana brothers, 2004 (est. $8,00012,000), for $66,000. When the chairs, composed of stuffed animals on a metal base and produced in an edition of 20, first appeared at the Moss store in New York, they were priced at $18,000.

Payne, too, thinks that the next market wave will be driven by more contemporary designs. Ive always been looking at the prototypes and editions of works from the past 15 to 20 years. That is an area that the contemporary art market understands, he says. In December architect Zaha Hadids prototype Aqua table, 2005 (est. $250350,000), brought $296,000, the most expensive postwar piece ever sold at Phillips.

Given the rapid ascent of the field, some wonder whether it has matured to the point where enthusiasts know as much or more about the objects as some experts do. This market used to be driven by specialist collectors, says Philippe Garner, Christies international head of 20th-century decorative art and design (he previously held similar posts at Sothebys and Phillips). They were knowledgeable and enthusiastic aficionados of design who knew the whole story and went after pieces to illustrate aspects of that design period. Now, says Garner, modern design has become a look that has caught the imagination of a relatively young audience, which is completely seduced by it without necessarily having that deep background. Hes not surprised at the appeal, however. These works have a chic timelessness and feel right in a contemporary setting.

The young enthusiasts Garner is referring to have helped propel Christies New York sales to new heights. In December a collection of French midcentury pieces consigned by film producer Scott Rudin brought an astonishing $10 million and gave Christies the market share for the season.

Whether this market can sustain the kind of growth it has experienced over the past few seasons remains to be seen. Given the competition and recent record prices, says one auction house specialist, I would not recommend design as an investment if somebody is looking to buy tomorrows hot ticket. On the other hand, David Rago, who co-owns, with John Sollo, Rago Arts and Auction Center in Lambertville, New Jersey, is decidedly bullish. We used to hope to get 100 people bidding by phone during a modern sale, says Rago. But recently, response has been so strong that weve had to cut the number of phone bidders off at 250. While there are more buyers, Rafo adds, the nature of his collector base has not changed: It has always been younger collectors, cutting-edge dealers, museums, designers and decorators. Were just getting larger numbers of the same people competing in the sales.

More buyers surely means that demand for top pieces will intensify, driving up prices. But whatever the cost, modern design has an inherent appeal that for many distinguishes it from fine art: its potential use value. Paintings just hang on the wall, says adviser Lee Mindel, but if you think about how many times you sit down in a chair, it turns out its really not so expensive.

Art + Auction online.

Jean Prouve porthole doors, Charlotte Perriand desk, and Alexandre Noll mahogany armchair courtesy of Sotheby's, New York; All other images courtesy Christie's, New York