It’s the easiest of easy money dream: buy a bit of tat at a junk shop or online for a few dollars and then discover it’s worth thousands, or even millions.
Waikato stylist, instagrammer and blogger Erena Te Paa probably has better odds than most of uncovering the un-recognised gems. For three years, she and husband Joe have been renovating a stylish 1968 bush-side home by well-known Hamilton mid-century architect Rodney Smith. She says she is constantly combing on-line furniture listings and looking at mid-century real estate listings for style inspiration, particularly if they still have original furniture or features in situ.
“I tend to be an obsessive, I’m a big on-line person,” Te Paa says. “I saw this mid-century house in the real estate listings and this ‘wormy’ chair in purple and red and thought ‘should I email the agent?’ I was thinking about it so much, then about two months later, I was flicking through furniture listings and there it was.
“I said to Joe, ‘it’s my chair!’”
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There are plenty of similar stories to be found overseas: a $12.50 ring bought at a car boot sale, turns out to be 26 carat diamond, sells at Sotheby’s London for £656,750 ($1.222 million); a dress of Princess Diana’s bought for $56 at an op shop, sold at auction in December for $363,000; a $6 picture frame hiding an original copy of the US Declaration of Independence that sold for $3.74 million.
When she won the bid for the chair at $300,Te Paa says it was the most she’d spent on her furniture finds. When she emailed the seller telling her that she’d regretted not tracking it down when she first saw it, they both figured it was meant to be. Turns out the stylish spiral chair had been in a doctor’s waiting room, then sat in a garage with the old gumboots.
It wasn’t until Te Paa worked with her upholsterer – the purple and red was being replaced by a cool greige – that she and Jannine Hodgson of Nene’s Upholstery in Frankton discovered an original maker’s tag for Italian furniture brand Edra. A spot of on-line research revealed the firm had produced the chair/couch called the Tatlin, based on the spiral form of a monumental building designed by Russian architect Victor Tatlin. Officially known as the Monument to the Third International, the building was planned as the headquarters of the Comintern, communism’s international governing body, in 1919. But the rotating steel building, intended as a Lenin’s landmark equivalent of the Eiffel Tower as a propaganda celebration of his revolution, was impractical and so never built.
With their chair, on the other hand, designers Mario Cananzi and Roberto Semprini created a delightful clever way of seating – the twisting spiral back can become an arm chair at one angle, a bench seat for up to ten people at another. The original owner says it was the most expensive furniture she had ever owned, so was glad it went to such an enthusiast. Te Paa has her Tatlin in the roomy master bedroom she and Joe created from a former living room in their work-in-progress renovation, a serene space of pale concrete floors and original wood ceiling.
The Tatlin sofa, with original maker's tag, in upholsterer Janine Hodgson's workshop. Picture/Erena Te Paa.
She has been known to rotate finds in and then out of her collection, but discovering that this chair sells new in the United States for over US$17,000 ($32,000) means this one might be a keeper. Vintage pieces sell for around $10,500.
Te Paa’s also had an M-shaped sofa identified by an eagle-eyed Instagram follower as by Swiss brand De Sede. But she and upholsterer Hodgson, who so far has not said no to a challenge, have recently re-worked a curvy no-name sofa into a cool interpretation of a classic Vladimir Kagan, the avant garde designer whose work is beloved by top international interior designers.
“I thought the chair was beautiful before I knew what it was. And I have no regrets about changing the colour, even though I’ve probably depreciated it to the point where it is no longer valuable,” she writes on her Instagram account.
“I’ve always thought that if you like something, it shouldn’t matter what it is but what you love about it.”
