If someone told Marc Newson some 40 years ago that an aluminum lounge that he made in his early 20s would later fetch more than a million pounds at auction, he wouldn’t believe. But, that’s what just happened. A lounge chair designed by Apple design guru Marc Newson set a record Tuesday when it sold for $3.7 million at an auction at Phillips in London. The lounge was meant to be one fluid aluminum form but Newson didn’t know how to create it. So he riveted aluminum sheets together, giving the piece a military aircraft feel. “It’s become the most iconic piece of that genre that lies somewhere between design and art,” Newson says.
Newson’s chairs, tables and shelves were displayed like sculptures, and fetched comparable prices. But it’s that aluminum Lockheed Lounge, one of which is currently sold, a piece he designed just a year after graduating from Sydney College of the Arts, has become iconic.
There are just 15 Lockheed Lounges in existence; and when one recently sold at auction for $3.7 million, it set a record for a piece by a living designer.