A woman acquired a wooden chair from a trash shop for £5 (RS 500) and sold it for £16,250 at an auction (Rs 16.4 lakh).
The woman purchased the chair in a store in Brighton, East Sussex, UK, unaware that it was a rare design. When she contacted a valuer, she found that the chair was from a Vienna avant-garde art school in the early twentieth century.
Koloman Moser, a well-known Austrian painter, designed the chair in 1902. Moser was a member of the Vienna Secession, a group of artists that opposed established aesthetic trends. The chair is a contemporary take on a conventional ladder-back chair from the early 20th century. The webbing on the seat and back of the chair has a checkerboard-like grid that serves as a decorative feature.
Sworders auctioneers in Stansted Mountfitchet, Essex, was selling the chair. The chair was purchased over the phone for £16,250 (Rs 16.4 lakh) by an Austrian merchant.
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John Black, a specialist at Sworders who first valued the piece said, ‘We are delighted with the sale price and are particularly pleased to know it will be going back to Austria. The seller was also thrilled and I think they needed to sit down upon being told how much it sold for’.
Black further said, ‘The vendor had done some research but was unsure if the attribution was correct, so I decided the best course of action would be to speak to Dr Christian Witt-Dorring, a specialist on the Vienna Secession movement. He confirmed the attribution and praised this example for the dignity of its original condition’.
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