After reading the recent Dezeen article about the seizure and destruction of some China-made Wegner reproductions in Norway, I've come away with a bunch of questions.
Here's the article in question:
http://www.dezeen.com/2015/10/08/hans-j-wegner-fake-round-chair-shipment-destroyed-norwegian-authorities/
The first thing I wondered was how much PP's authorized Round Chair goes for. The apparent answer shocked me. I haven't seen prices listed on US sites, but the following UK firm lists the pp501 for £3,815 and the pp503 for £3,010 (or roughly $4,600-5,900 in USD using an fx rate of $1.54/gbp).
Those prices are astonishing on an absolute basis, but what really struck me is the price difference between these PP chairs and other authorized makers of Wegner designs. The same website linked above offers the Carl Hansen-made Elbow chair for £482. On US-sites you can buy the same chair on sale right now for $590 (regular price $695).
I've seen the PP video on the making of the Round Chair and it is impressive. The older version on YouTube made the entire process appear manual. There's a newer version on PP's website that splices some of that older (?) footage with footage of CNC machines and auto lathes playing a role. Either way, the process is intensive and the wood is very special.
But I have a hard time understanding how PP's chair is 6-8x as "special" as the Carl Hansen chairs. Clearly the Round Chair is more complex and uses more material than the Elbow chair. But again...6x as much?
Presumably Carl Hansen is making a high-quality product. Same with J.L. Møllers, whose Model 71 chair goes for more than the Elbow, but only costs 1/5th of PP's Round Chair.
So, my questions...
1. What is PP doing that Carl Hansen and J.L. Møllers are not?
2. Is PP's profitability per chair in-line with the lower-priced chairs, or are they earning a much higher margin?
3. Was the Round Chair always priced at such a big premium to these other chairs? Even when it was made by Johannes Hansen?
4. I've read that PP took over production of the Round Chair in 1990 and that Wegner was close with the firm for quite a while before his death. Was this price discrepancy in place during Wegner's time? Would he have been okay with the current pricing?
To me, the best argument for unauthorized reproductions is that exclusivity leads to high prices, which makes good design unreachable for all but the most wealthy. That kinda falls flat for me when we're talking about a $250 knock-off of questionable quality versus a $800-1000 authorized version made to consistently high standards. But when a single chair costs $4,600, I start to think that maybe priorities are off balance.
Mullacc –
I cannot answer any of questions 1 through 6 with any authority, but your assumption that the current Moller product is quality did stand out to me. I will concede that vintage Moller products appear well made, and the low attrition rate for vintage Moller piece seems to substantiate this. However, I have come across a few examples of modern Moller pieces at various Design Within Reach stores in the San Francisco area, and I have been appalled by what I have seen – I have seen higher quality from run-of-the mill fake Wegner chairs from China.
So if you are going purely by a comparison between PP and Moller, the 6-8x markup for PP actually makes a a great deal of sense.
Also, I have historically been a fan of Carl Hansen – we previously owned CH-made Wegner Wishbones c. 2001 and consistently oogled over the quality of those chairs. Our CH-made Wegner CH-07 c.2007.... not so much. It is really not holding up well from even occasional use. Also, I have seen more knots than expected in more recent CH pieces. It turns out that quality wood is pretty expensive stuff, so this may explain why the CH pieces are still moderately affordable.
This is not to say that I have any idea what I am talking about. It is Monday, after all...
I'll just tackle one part of all the questions.
The famous Playboy "Designs for Living" article from July 1961 actually lists prices for a few well known designs from that time. The Round Chair (erroneously crediting the maker as Frederick Lunning, who started the Georg Jensen store in NYC), was only slightly more expensive than a Baker Finn Juhl chair, and actually cheaper than an average Jens Risom high back chair.
cdsilva - Interesting datapoints. I looked up 10 examples where the comparable item is sold today and the average price appreciation is 4.5% per annum. That's 0.5% better than average rate of CPI since 1961. Pretty good. The Wegner Round Chair comes in at a whooping 5.8% p.a., but that's second best to the Bertoia high-back chair at 6.2% p.a.
Carl Hansen's production (as well as Andreas Tuck, A.P. Stolen, RY Møbler, and Getama who were the members of the Salesco group) has always represented Wegner's "factory" designs, versus Johannes Hansen primarily who was the maker of Wegner's "cabinet maker" ("snedkermester") designs.
So there was historically a difference. Same difference with Finn Juhl designs executed by Niels Vodder vs say France and Søn.
The Round Chair is an exception in that it became so popular that a large number of copies were made. Johannes Hansen was apparently embarrassed in the mid-50s to be selling so many chairs because he was producing so many units that his fellow snedkermesters would look down on him as a factory. Of course he insisted, and I believe the record bears him out, that even at such a high number of units produced he maintained quality at a consistent high level.
Yeah, great stuff, leif.
Other than PP, are there other cabinet makers still active to a similar extent?
Given the prices I've seen for PP's chairs, I can only assume their target market is the very highest end luxury or enthusiast buyer. Perhaps this is only true outside of Denmark though?
"Given the prices I've seen for PP's chairs, I can only assume their target market is the very highest end luxury or enthusiast buyer. Perhaps this is only true outside of Denmark though?"
Not sure exactly what you're asking but if it's that the Danish market aren't the people paying high prices...not necessarily. I lived there for a year and have known Danes in Denmark for a long time before and after that year. I also have done a lot of shopping there and can say that there are plenty of Danes who value the good Danish furniture very, very highly and will pay through the nose for it. When I got back to the US I found that it was way easier to get bargains here on good Danish furniture than it was in Denmark. The people there in general seemed to be pretty aware of Danish design, way more so than Americans about American design, for instance. Of course Denmark is a tiny country with a homogenous population, which makes a huge difference.
If that's not when you meant, I'll just back slowly out of the discussion now...
spanky: Since the only price I've seen for PP's chair is from a UK site, I wasn't sure if prices in Denmark were similarly high. From what you say, it sounds like the Danish aren't getting any sort of local discount.
Anyway, I'm not even sure I'm asking the right questions. There isn't a lot of easily available information, so trying to satisfying my curiosity about the market for such an expensive chair isn't easy.
Just as I finished my last comment, I noticed there's a set of 8 Johannes Hansen chairs coming up in a Wright auction.
http://www.wright20.com/auctions/2015/11/scandinavian-design/192
From the description: "This set of eight chairs was originally acquired in in the 1960s by the National Academy of Sciences, Washington DC where they were used around a conference table in the office of the academy’s president..."
I find it fascinating that this sort of organization was able to buy high-end modern chairs from Denmark. It was the same year as the Kennedy/Nixon debate, so it's not obvious to me that the choice was inspired by that. Seems unlikely that the NAS would be able to make that kind of purchase today.
Actually the Round Chair became well known well before the 1964 debate. In the mid 50s, as I mentioned above, Americans had become aware of the chair are were queueing up outside Johannes Hansen establishment to order them. And the chair got a lot of press. Obviously this is a smaller scale than the 1st televised American presidential debate, but the people who knew about the chair were the right sorts of buyers / interior designers etc to drive an enormous number of sales relative to Johannes Hansen's production capacity and the "normal" expectations of a snedkermester's shop.
"Since the only price I've seen for PP's chair is from a UK site, I wasn't sure if prices in Denmark were similarly high. From what you say, it sounds like the Danish aren't getting any sort of local discount."
Nope, nothing like that. They're a very egalitarian people. Everyone plays by the same rules, no matter if you're a head of state or a gas station attendant.
Also, I was surprised that a given item is the same price everywhere. I mean, like you won't find a new Bojesen monkey for any price other than 850 DKK. Used, ok--that can vary. At least that's how it was when I was there.
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