Incollect Magazine - Issue 2

Issue 2 80 www.incollect.com Very rare and large ceiling lamp designed by Paavo Tynell. Produced by Taito Oy in Finland. Image courtesy by Studio Schalling. tracked only $2.108 million in auction sales for Tynell, suggesting, on the one hand, a rapid upward trend in demand for the late Finnish designer’s work as well as an escalation in prices for all items. The appreciation of his work continues to this day but the high prices seen on the secondary market for Tynell are however a relatively recent phenomenon. In 2000, for example, a lovely brass chandelier, today a highly-priced item, was sold at Wright in Chicago for $8,625. Since then, according to Artnet records, 3,378 works attributed to Tynell have been sold at auctions with a record price of $400,000 set in July 2020, at Artcurial in Paris, for one of the artist’s exquisite snowflake chandeliers. Part of Tynell’s continuing success Ballon believes is that his lighting fits perfectly in all contemporary interiors, no matter which style they are created in. Philippe Rapin of Maison Rapin, sees the appeal in a synthesis of opposing historical design styles. “The lighting he made was based on modernism and romanticism—two opposing concepts he brilliantly put together. His relationship to nature was constant as in the snowflake chandelier, a lyrical masterpiece embodying lightness and modernity.” Nikitin is also an admirer of the snowflake chandeliers. The key to the design is a perforated lower bowl for globes that diffuses light downward and sideways but mostly up and through a cascading rain of reflective mesh snowflake ornaments. The pinnacle of these creations for Nikitin is “a gigantic one (almost 10 feet high) custom ordered for the Enso-Guzeit Club House Honkapirtti in Finland in 1947,” he says. “This flawless composition of 120 brass snowflakes installed in a traditional interior with wooden walls is very Scandinavian, very Finnish, very Paavo Tynell.” Very rare table lamp designed by Paavo Tynell. Produced by Taito Oy in Finland. Image courtesy of Studio Schalling.