IN 1970, I worked as a stationery buyer at Georg Jensen, then a multilevel store on Fifth Avenue filled with china from Royal Copenhagen and other precious things. The company’s large wholesale business in Scandinavian furniture—hugely popular at one time—had become a major money loser and was on its last legs: The world was captivated instead with everything Italian. Today, thanks to demand for furniture that has that classic, 20th-century feel but isn’t overexposed, the fortunes of those Northern European designs have turned around dramatically. So much so that companies such as Fritz Hansen,Carl Hansen & Son and Artek are reseizing the spotlight by combing through dusty archives, cellars and attics to reissue any potential lost treasure. Reissues are not a new phenomenon—the Italian company Cassina began reviving Le Corbusier pieces in 1964. But the market for them has exploded in the last few years. It’s good news for people who want a classic piece but have neither the time nor desire to scour antiques sales or stalk 1stdibs for a rare example of Hans Wegner’s Papa Bear chair.
Even better, these new-old pieces give you a wider range of options than the list of acceptably iconic pieces that, while great, are verging on being overused. Related The Barcelona Chair: Too Iconic to be Cozy? “Things like the Barcelona chair are victims of their own success because they’re knocked off, sometimes very poorly,” said New York designer Steven Sclaroff (whose clients include Kate and Andy Spade) of the classic seat originally designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe in 1929. Over time, the chair has become a modernist cliché, littering office foyers and décor-by-the-numbers homes. Other star pieces, such as the lounge chair and ottoman by Charles and Ray Eames, have become equally ubiquitous as shorthand for good taste in everything from luxury condo brochures to shelter magazines. An antidote to been-there-done-that predictability, the new wave of reissues is not limited to Scandinavian design. This year, American furniture giant Herman Miller is aiming to re-establish the work of Ward Bennett, a mostly forgotten American designer whose mix of high-tech materials and sensuous forms epitomized later 20th-century style.
Similarly, this fall, Herman Miller’s closest competitor, Knoll, is reissuing a lesser-known settee version of its best-selling but rather commonplace Womb Chair, designed by Eero Saarinen. “There’s nothing better than an authentic reissue. You see the piece and you think of the person and what went behind it,” said Lee Mindel, a principal at New York architecture studio Shelton, Mindel & Associates, whose client list includes Ralph Lauren and Sting and Trudie Styler. This back-to-the-future approach to design in 2015 can span many different eras, countries and functions. Swiss manufacturer Vitra has reissued a set of office furniture from the 1940s by Jean Prouvé, famous for his steel prefab houses. French company Ligne Roset has released a wall-mounted desk created by French designer Pierre Paulin in 1952, before he became known for the Pop-like forms he used to furnish private rooms of the Élysée Palace. And Kansas-born designer Milo Baughman, known for his affordable and unpretentious pieces, is getting another look: His lounge chair, designed in 1966, was revived at the behest of John Edelman, chairman of Design Within Reach.
In short, it’s open season on the entire canon of 20th-century design. Reissues that can sub in for overused greats. Judith Gura, a design historian and faculty member at the New York School of Interior Design, said that the new wave of reissues is easily appreciated because the pieces have the mostly clean lines and sculptural profiles of modernism. “They don’t bear specific style characteristics that date them, like cabriole legs or acanthus leaves,” she said. “And because they are so simple, they mix well.” Matilda McQuaid, deputy curatorial director at the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum, points to a lack of interesting contemporary furniture designs as a factor. “We haven’t looked at the past as intensively as we are now,” she said. “Designers [today] are more interested in larger scale scenarios like urban renewal and urban planning.” Hence, the rush to reveal the fresh appeal of old things. A case in point: Until 1994, Herman Miller only sold eight classic pieces, including the Eames lounge chair and George Nelson pedestal tables.
Having rereleased the back catalog of George Nelson designs as well as those of the Eameses and Isamu Noguchi, the firm now has 53 classics in production, and reissues account for 10 to 20% of its business. “It’s not an exercise in nostalgia,” said executive creative director Ben Watson, who has overseen the reintroduction of several of Alexander Girard’s works as well, a personal passion. “We have an extraordinary legacy.” Previously unheralded women designers are belatedly getting their share of the limelight, too. Long-coveted designs by Swedish-born Greta Grossman and Kerstin Hörlin-Holmquist, whose pieces can fetch many thousands of dollars on the secondary market, are being produced again, thanks to Gubi, a Danish company that calls itself a treasure hunter. Long-lost classics by Le Corbusier associate Charlotte Perriand continue to be produced by Cassina. A Classic, Now in Dressed-Up Versions And over the next year, homeowners hunting for alternatives to yawningly familiar designs like Isamu Noguchi’s coffee table (knocked off so widely you can find a fake for $295) will have their choice of 12 innovative midcentury pieces by architect Lina Bo Bardi, never produced on a mass scale, care of Brazilian manufacturer Etel.
Though these reissues can depress values of the originals, they fill a need in the market, said Richard Wright, head of auction house Wright. Italian master Gio Ponti, for example, is a towering figure in design, but only the lucky could find his pieces. That is, until Italian company Molteni&C began a market correction three years ago by reissuing a few of Mr. Ponti’s pieces, including a small table from the mid-’50s. The price is often right, as well. Another reissued piece, an armchair Mr. Ponti designed for his home in 1953, costs $6,166, still less than Arne Jacobsen’s oft-copied Egg Chair. Carl Hansen & Son, the Danish furniture company begun in 1908, has reissued the Colonial Chair—designed in 1949 by another forgotten modernist, Ole Wanscher—at a fourth of the price you’d pay for an original in an antique shop. “I don’t work with many architects who are still alive,” said Knud Erik Hansen, a descendant of the company’s founder. “Vintage is old enough to be in fashion again.”
But what constitutes “vintage” is always changing, too. When Sheridan Coakley, co-founder of British firm SCP, wanted to celebrate his 30th anniversary in business this year, he decided to reintroduce several designs from its archives. “When I started, people didn’t buy contemporary furniture,” said Mr. Coakley. Now there’s a whole fresh audience. People are more at ease with modern design.” One of his reintroductions was the first commercially produced piece by now-acclaimed British designer Jasper Morrison: a bar stool that came out in 1986. Corrections & Amplifications The luxury shop Georg Jensen was located on Fifth Avenue in New York until it moved to Madison Avenue in 1970. An earlier version of this article incorrectly implied that it was located on Fifth Avenue throughout the 1970s. More in Design & Decorating The Search for the Ideal Shelves Lessons from Garden Designer Edmund Hollander’s Own Unassuming Oasis Why Children Need Playhouses Décor that Tastefully Embraces the Colors of the Rainbow Interior Designer Bunny Williams on Dogs and Elegance Bright Ideas for Decorating a Swinging Outdoor Deck