Noll caught the attention of the design world at large in 2003, when Joop consigned a number of his by-then-huge trove of the artist’s pieces to a Sotheby’s sale. A mahogany Noll chair, primordial yet pillowlike, from an edition of five, was bought by Stephanie Seymour for $680,000, setting a briefly held auction record for postwar design. "Until then, Noll’s market had been growing at a healthy rate," recalls James Zemaitis, the head of the 20th-century decorative arts department at Sotheby’s. "But this was a beautiful sale: the collection of a minor celebrity, full of pieces by a rising star. It came at the perfect moment."

The Sotheby’s sale made Noll a "name" designer, although he is still not a household name. "Noll remains an acquired taste," says Richard Wright, head of the Chicago auction house that bears his name and specializes in postwar design and art. "He has such a unique aesthetic. His work is so idiosyncratic and feels so primal."

The $680,000 paid for the mahogany chair remains the high-water mark for Noll design, but as evidenced by the London auction, demand for his output is still strong. "I’m sure Noll prices will continue to rise as masterworks become rarer," says the New York dealer Cristina Grajales, who purchased the record-breaking chair on behalf of Seymour. "There are fewer pieces around because the collectors are really keen on keeping them — they refuse to part from them," says the Paris-based design dealer Jacques Lacoste, who staged a memorable 2008 show of the artist’s work. "This is not a speculative market."

Case in point: Tucked away in the warehouse section of DeLorenzo’s downtown gallery, DeLorenzo 1950, is a magnificent six-foot-long mahogany sideboard carved circa 1947. "I’ll probably never sell it," the dealer says.

Functional objects remain the most sought-after Noll pieces, with smaller items, such as boxes and bowls, fetching between $2,500 and $7,000. But interest in his purely sculptural pieces is rising. Prices have lately ranged from $50,000 to $80,000, depending in part on size and type of wood, ebony pieces bringing the top sums. But many feel the greatest lure of Noll’s work is the mystique surrounding it. You can picture him humbly toiling away, carving a single chair from a huge block of the wood he so adored: teak, rosewood, ebony, mahogany, elm, beech, walnut — even, during the Second World War, when wood was rationed, scavenged railway ties. "Everything he made was sculpture, really," says Grajales wistfully. "When you come across a Noll piece, you feel an immediate urge to touch it, to stroke it gently. There’s not much art you can say that about."

"Into the Wood" originally appeared in the April 2009 issue of Art+Auction. For a complete list of articles from this issue available on ARTINFO, see Art+Auction's April 2009 Table of Contents.