How to Buy a Lockheed Lounge

When Christie's announced that it would sell one of Marc Newson's Lockheed Lounges, now the poster child for the design art movement, during Frieze Week, I wondered whether or not the lot could pull off a triple coup: by breaking the $1 million mark; which would mean trumping Newson's previous record at auction, set when Sotheby's sold a prototype of the same piece for $968,000 last year; and also setting a new auction record for a living designer's work.

It did. An anonymous buyer bought it for $1.5 million.

But while Christie's may have established a new record for Newson in the public market, that price doesn't hold a candle to a private sale. Statements printed out for visitors to Sebastian + Barquet's booth at Design Art London announced that it had resold the prototype acquired at Sotheby's for just shy of $1 million to the tune of $2.5 million. Sure, a prototype comes at a premium, but a $1 million premium? Congratulations to the anonymous buyer at Christie's. You got a relative bargain.