Over 122 pre-owned Ikea furniture brought in a total of $40,000, or £32,000, at a relatively sophisticated Stockholm auction in Sweden on the night of last Dec. 18, with vintage flatpack furnishings from the 1950s and 1990s headlining the sale.
Facilitated by Auktionsverk, the oldest auction house in the world, the sale included classic Ikea tableware, mirrors, lights, and chairs for the living space. Among the items that occupied the auction's lots was a line of furniture that was still manufactured in Sweden, as was the norm for the company back in the '50s.
In addition to that, the sale also included porcelain tableware that the company conceptualized back in the '90s as part of a collaboration effort with the National Museum in Stockholm.
Perhaps the most visually arresting piece that came under the hammer was a red Impala sofa originally made by Gillis Lundgren, the same expert Ikea designer who created the iconic and widespread "Billy" bookshelf. The red sofa itself was sold for £1,700 in the auction, over sixteen times its retail price of £103 when it first came out in 1972.
According to a report by The Guardian, these kinds of Ikea furnishings are what Ulrika Ruding, head of applied arts for Auktionsverk, would classify as "something special" or "something to draw a designer's eye," especially in contrast to the run-of-the-mill Ikea products that wouldn't fit in the auction house's sales.
Another of these key pieces is a pair of leather-made '70s Natura easy chairs, which specifically fetched over £1,000 in the Dec. 18 night sale. For Ruding, it generated that much interest due to it being a fascinating reinterpretation of classic Scandinavian furniture.
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Ikea's Past Auction History
Although the world-famous furniture retailer isn't exactly the go-to when it comes to long-standing sofas or tables, the items featured in the Auktionsverk sale show the outliers within Ikea's catalog, items that are high within the "shopping cart" list of collectors and enthusiasts alike.
Similarly, this demand was exhibited in the world-record sale for Ikea furniture set in May of last year, when a limited-edition Cavelli chair by Swedish designer Bengt Ruda sold for around £15,000, or over $19,000. This particular sale was leaps and bounds above its original retail price of £23 back in 1958.
Li Pamp, head of Auktionsverk, told France 24, "I've been working in the auction industry for almost 30 years, and if somebody when I started would have said 'One day you will host an Ikea auction in a very nice showroom,' I would have said 'No, no, that's absolutely, that's not possible.'"
Pamp also noted that the Swedish retailer has had its fair share of controversies in the past, referencing Ikea's history of plagiarism and hopping on the bandwagon in terms of trends, however, she also said that "there are also some items that stand out."
