Description

Provenance and Background Info

(This description was written in 2018. I sold this pair on ebay back in 2004 for $595 THE PAIR.)

I’ve had to include this listing to highlight how much this market has changed since 2004. Back then the replica market was just forming in Australia and the likes of Matt Blatt were selling only on ebay. Matt Blatt hadn’t cottoned on to the fibreglass / plastic designs at that stage so this type of thing was a really good seller for me in 2003 – 2004. The second Matt Blatt started selling them I noticed it (because I too was selling on ebay) so stopped buying the stuff immediately. I was going to a car-wrecker place before then to get items like this professionally re-sprayed / two-packed. They looked amazing professionally re-finished and were a sensation at the time because there weren’t many around- the Matt Blatt replicas hit the market sometime after 2004 and the market for vintage items in the Sarrinen-style (even the authentic Saarinen pieces) pretty-much died overnight. The problem with the replica tulip chairs is that many break quite easily and end up in landfill. All the vintage ones that look like this are sturdy- some are better than others. The authentic Saarinen pieces are sensational in quality. There is still a market for authentic LABELLED Saarinen designs (though values decreased substantially when Matt Blatt started doing replicas). The market for vintage pieces done in the same style has pretty much died now. Something like this pair would still fetch about $595 these days IF you could convince the buyer they are authentic vintage pieces and that’s hard because most don’t have labels.

I WOULD stock any authentic labelled Saarinen design in iNVISeDGE and do everything I can to get the prices these important historical designs deserve.