Incollect Magazine - Issue 9

Incollect Magazine 87 Todd Merrill, the New York design dealer, was also involved in keeping Karl Springer’s inventory alive. Merrill had been selling vintage Springer works for some time and noticed Springer had “re-emerged in the secondary market in the early 2000s” as he explained to Architectural Digest in 2017, and that the prices for vintage works were exceeding costs to produce new ones. In 2016 he and Eckman joined forces to reissue some of Springer’s iconic, popular designs under the Karl Springer LTD logo, beginning with the Free Form tables. The pieces were reproductions of the originals, though they were also made by some of the same craftsmen who had worked on the initial designs, with the same attention to detail. Prices recorded in the Artnet price database show a secondary auction market for Springer that is both stable and consistent. This does not tell the whole story: while the volume of transactions is large, over 1250 results in the database, prices are relatively low in comparison to his designer peers, in part — it would appear — because of the reissuing of his coveted designs. Auction prices for the rare original Free Form tables from the 1970s (a set of 2 or 3) have achieved the highest auction prices, with a set of three sold at Wright in Chicago in 2014 for $50,000. This remains the auction record for the designer. The market for Springer’s work does not always distinguish between the works produced during his lifetime and the later reproductions, a situation that is complicated by the fact that according to New York design dealer Evan Lobel (who purchased the collection of original Polaroids of Springer’s inventory taken in his New York showroom and has devoted years to researching and writing about Springer) only around half of the pieces the designer produced during his lifetime had studio labels or were signed. Complicating the matter further, Lobel says, Springer used different labels at different times with different materials. “You can't just go by the labels when it comes to Springer,” Lobel says. “Some designs are simply iconic and only made for Springer and there is no doubt that they are authentic even if they are unmarked,” he explains. Lobel points to the Free Form tables, which he regularly has in his gallery in the New York Design Center. “You can't stamp smooth curved metal, so these tables were never marked,” he says, adding that there are ways to determine authenticity. “You have to look at the shape, thickness of the metal, the quality, finish, patina, and age, and the internal construction.” Though Springer came to be identified with design in the disco era, his designs were far more varied and textured than is often appreciated. He adjusted his style more or less every decade of his career and evolved his thinking as tastes changed; an initial love of exotic finishes, especially lacquered skins, and parchment, gave way to polished, glossy finishes in the 1980s Jean-Michel Frank series JMF floor lamp with a square twisted base in a gilded finish with matching square gilded paper shade, c. 1980. From Liz O’Brien Gallery on Incollect. using stainless steel, gunmetal, brass, gilding and glass. Springer then followed with some fairly audacious (for the time) material explorations with Lucite, chrome, inlaid-wood veneer, bone and shell parquetry, travertine, granite, and even cast concrete. “Springer understood that craftsmanship, clean lines, and luxurious materials have a special staying power,” Malena Brush from Habitat Gallery in Los Angeles says, summarizing the