Collectible design is furniture and objects bought for what they are, not only for what they do. A chair you sit in every day can also be a documented piece by a named designer, made by a particular manufacturer, in a particular decade, and worth more in ten years than it is today. This page explains how we think about it, and what in our Al Quoz showroom in Dubai falls into that category.
What makes a piece collectible
Four things, in roughly this order.
Who designed it
A named designer with a documented body of work. Marcel Breuer, Le Corbusier, Mies van der Rohe, Poul Kjaerholm, Mario Bellini, Arne Jacobsen. The name is not decoration, it is the reason a piece has a market at all.
Who made it, and when
This is the part most buyers miss, and it is usually where the value sits. The Wassily chair has been made by several manufacturers across seventy years. A Wassily made by Gavina in Italy in the 1960s and a Wassily made under licence last year are the same design and very different objects. The same is true of the PK11: ours was made by E. Kold Christensen, the original Danish manufacturer who produced Kjaerholm's work from 1955, not by the company that acquired the rights later.
Condition and originality
Original upholstery, original frame, original finish. A piece that has been reupholstered in the wrong material or rechromed badly loses value that it does not get back. Honest wear is almost always better than a bad restoration.
Whether it can be traced
Labels, stamps, maker's marks, and failing those, the physical details that identify a production run. This is why we photograph markings where they exist, and why we will say we do not know rather than guess.
What we hold that qualifies
Not every piece in the showroom is collectible, and we would rather say so. A good anonymous 1970s Italian floor lamp is a good lamp. It is not an investment.
The pieces where maker and designer are both documented currently include work by Knoll, Cassina, Gavina, Arflex, Castelli, Thonet, Matteo Grassi and E. Kold Christensen on the furniture side, and Mazzega, Vistosi, Flos, Artemide and Stilnovo in lighting.
Our single most documented piece is the Poul Kjaerholm PK11 armchair, designed in 1957 and made by E. Kold Christensen.
Murano glass as collectible design
Murano is collectible on different terms. The makers matter, Mazzega and Vistosi above all, but so does technique: a piece worked in lattimo, or in the tube and petal forms of the 1960s and 1970s, is identifiable by how it was made as much as by who made it. We hold around 92 pieces of vintage Murano lighting, which is one of the larger collections in the Gulf. See Murano Lighting and our guide to Murano glass.
Rugs as collectible objects
A hand knotted rug is collectible for reasons that have nothing to do with designers. The weaving region, the dyes, the wool and the age of the piece are what matter, and a good village rug can be worth more than a finer looking workshop one. We hold around 70, mostly Tabriz, Anatolian and Kerman. See Vintage Persian Rugs and the buyer's guide.
What we will not tell you
We will not attribute a piece to a designer we cannot evidence. Around 200 pieces in our collection are what the trade calls no name: neither we nor the supplier knows who made them, and no amount of confidence would change that. Those pieces are sold on what they are, not on a name.
If a piece is attributed on our site, it is because it is marked, documented, or bought from a source that could evidence it.
Buying collectible design in Dubai
Most collectible design in the region is bought online from Europe, sight unseen, with freight and customs on top. Ours is already in Al Quoz. You can look at the underside of a chair, check a weld, and see what a piece actually looks like in a room before you commit to it.
See vintage furniture in Dubai for the full picture of what we hold, or arrange a visit.
