Vintage white chairs and Oak Simon Pengelly table at the London home of Merchant & Found owner, Paul Middlemiss
How to spot the Eames chair of the future writes Kate Finnigan for The Financial Times - House & Home on Sunday 5th February 2023
How do you unearth a future design classic, a piece of furniture — old or new — that will resonate in years to come and, with luck, keep on increasing in value? We’re in the age of cheap mass production but in reaction to that there is growing consumer concern about the provenance and longevity of the products we choose to live with. Finding pieces that are designed and made in a way that will stand the test of time matters. Paul Middlemiss, a British furniture dealer and founder of online retailer Merchant & Found, who also sources vintage items for restaurants and hotels, is in the business of finding future classics. For him that means “well-designed, well-crafted objects made of good materials, which for whatever reason have fallen out of favour for the moment or are under the radar”.
As a former buying director at The Conran Shop and Habitat, Middlemiss has an expert eye for spotting high-quality pieces and trends to come. He is the man who found the vintage furniture for London’s Sessions Arts Club and its upcoming Scottish outpost Boath House, near Nairn. He also supplies Balthazar and the Minetta Tavern in New York, scouring the world hunting for overlooked resources, such as 1950s bentwood dining chairs by the French maker Baumann. Right now, he’s looking further east for undiscovered gems, to Poland and the Czech Republic. The ‘iconic’ Eames lounge chair and ottoman, introduced in 1956 © Vitra “Over the years I’ve bought a lot of stuff in Scandinavia, all the mid-century Danish design, the Hans Wegners and the Finn Juhls,” he says. “It’s still amazing, but it’s now a ridiculous price and other brands are reproducing them.
Vintage Czech lighting being shot at the Merchant & Found warehouse in Hampshire
The old pieces coming out of eastern Europe are as well made, but by designers we just don’t know about. As people increasingly can’t afford the Finn Juhls, this stuff is going to be really sought after.” Fewer pieces by eastern European designers found their way into western Europe during the cold war era. “But back in the 1930s and just after the war those countries were important craft-makers,” says Middlemiss. “There was lots of glass production in the Czech Republic. Their crystal and chandeliers and incredible mouth-blown lights competed with Murano from Italy. I’ve found a lot of stunning 1950s and 60s lighting.” Middlemiss also points to cabinet work by Jiří Jiroutek, a furniture and interior designer at the Czech manufacturer Interier Praha in the mid-century. “The colour, the cabinet work, it’s just quality and would fit any modern interior. A second-hand Wegner sideboard will cost thousands, but a Jiroutek will be between £500 and £1,000.”
Kate Finnigan goes on to speak with Adam Hills, co- founder with is wife of the London-based salvage and interior design studio Retrouvious deciding what constitutes a future gem and goes on to speak with Hollie Bowden, interior designer and Priya Khanchandani head of curatorial at the Design Museum in London.
One piece, Paul Middlemiss always finds challenging is the table. ‘It’s very easy to buy 500 old chairs but you'll never find that many good old tables', he says. ‘Restaurants and hotels always have fairly basic tables that are easily replaceable. You don’t get large numbers of good tables in a church or schools. It tends to be private residences that have beautiful tables and that's why the French farmhouse table was so popular. But they’ve pretty much all gone.”
Paul Middlemiss, founder of Merchant & Found at one of the Simon Pengelly tables he commissioned to fit with vintage chairs
His solution was to commission a contemporary designer, Simon Pengelly, formerly of Habitat, to design a new one. “He’s made us a lovely oak trestle based table (£1,200 www.merchantandfound.com) a timeless piece that will work with any vintage chairs. It’s produced in Romania from local oak, sustainably forested. I’ve got one as my desk in the office and I’ve just sent one over to an architect in America."