Phillips de Pury To Auction Marc Newson's Lockheed Lounge

The chair is expected to fetch the equivalent of $700,000 to $1 million in American dollars.

Nicholas Tamarin -- Interior Design, 3/18/2009

Venerable auction house Phillips de Pury & Company will go back to the future when it puts Mark Newson's seminal 1985 "Lockheed Lounge" on the block April 30 as part of its London Design sale.

The biomorphic chaise that changed the Australian industrial designer's career has a pre-sale estimate of 500,000-700,000 British pounds, or the equivalent of $700,000 to $1 million in American dollars. A similar prototype was auctioned off at Sotheby's in June 2006 for $968,000, setting a record at the time for a work of a living designer.

The 46-year-old futurist debuted the riveted sheet aluminum-covered fiberglass form at the Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery in Sydney in 1986, shortly after graduating from Sydney College of Arts. The handcrafted piece, one of four artist proofs which preceded a limited edition of 10, is considered a precursor to the aerodynamic forms Newson would go on to create using computer software and more advanced production processes.

"The design is one of the most significant contributions to the quantum leap that design vocabulary has taken in the last 20 years," says Phillips de Pury worldwide director of design Alexander Payne. "And this example bears exceptional provenance."

Image courtesy of Phillips de Pury & Company.