I want to start this deep dive with a number,
21 ,905 ,000 euros. Which, depending on the exchange
rate, at that specific moment we were talking
about, hovered right around 31 million US dollars.
31 million dollars, yeah. And usually when we
talk about that kind of money, in the art world
anyway, we are visualizing a massive canvas,
right? Like a Rothko or something. Exactly, like
a Rothko or a Picasso, something that completely
dominates a gallery wall. But today we are talking
about a chair. And not a throne either. No. Not
some diamond encrusted golden seat built for
a monarch. It is just a small brown leather armchair.
Just a chair. It is the dragon's armchair or
the fauteuil o' dragons if we are being official.
Designed by the Irish architect and designer
Eileen Gray. Yes, Eileen Gray. And the fact that
a piece of furniture, something you literally
just sit on. shattered every single record for
decorative art is exactly what we need to unpack
today. Because it really is not just about inflation
or, you know, rich people throwing money around
for the sake of it. Right. It is deeper than
that. Much deeper. It is a perfect storm. It
is this incredible story where craftsmanship
and provenance and celebrity history and honestly,
just. raw market psychology all collided. Collided
at Christie's in Paris back in 2009. Exactly.
And that is the mission for this deep dive. We
have been going through all the sources, the
auction records, the biographies, the catalog
descriptions. I love it. And we are going to
trace how this one specific object went from
a humid bathroom in 1919. Which is a crazy story
on its own. So crazy. From a bathroom to a $2
,700 purchase in the 1970s. And finally, to that
absolute record -breaking $31 million moment.
It really is the ultimate case study in value.
It makes you ask what actually makes an object
priceless. Right. Is it the hand of the maker
or is it the hand of the owner? Or both. So let's
just start with the object itself. Because I
think if you hear someone say $31 million chair,
you automatically picture something incredibly
garish. Oh, for sure. Gold leaf everywhere. Right,
exactly. But looking at the images from the Christie's
catalog, it is surprisingly contained. Contained
is a really good word for it. It is actually
quite small. Really? Yeah, the dimensions are
only 61 by 91 centimeters. Oh, wow. So it is
petite. It was never meant to be this massive
lounge chair you sink into to watch football.
It is very much a sculptural object. So describe
it for us. For anyone listening who hasn't seen
the photos, what are we actually looking at here?
Well, visually, it is striking, but it is quite
dark. It is an upholstered wooded armchair covered
in this rich brown leather. Okay. But the frame
is really where the genius lies. It is sculpted
wood and it is lacquered in this brownish orange
and silver finish. Christie's actually described
the form of the chair as unfurling petals. Unfurling
petals. That is a very organic description for
a piece of furniture. It is, and it completely
fits. The armrests are not just straight rigid
lines. They are these serpentine intertwined
bodies that literally flow around the person
sitting in it. Which is where the name comes
from, right? The dragon's armchair. Exactly.
Hence the name. But looking closely at the relief
work on those armrests. and the notes actually
mention this ambiguity, are they definitely dragon?
Well, that is up for debate. And honestly, I
think that adds to the mystique of the whole
piece. How so? So the iconography is definitely
likened to traditional Chinese art. You have
these stylized clouds carved in low relief and
the general dragon motif. Right, the scales and
everything. Yeah, but the way the armrests flow
and bulge. Some critics and art historians have
actually compared them to a sea monster instead.
A sea monster. That feels a little bit more dangerous,
doesn't it? It really does. It gives the chair
this intense sense of movement, like the chair
is alive and sort of wrapping around you. And
that is slightly terrifying, but also amazing.
And the eyes of these creatures. Whether they're
dragons or sea monsters, they're made of black
lacquer set on a white ground. So they stand
out. Oh, they really pop against the darker wood
of the frame. It is absolutely not passive furniture.
It demands your attention. And the auction catalog
called it surprising, imaginative, subtly sculpted
and crafted. Yes. That word subtly is doing a
lot of heavy lifting for a $30 million item.
You would think for that price it would be screaming
its value at you. Well, you have to remember
that true luxury in that era, and specifically
in Eileen Gray's work, was very often about the
details you had to be standing right next to
the piece to even see. Ah, okay. Jennifer Goff,
who is the curator at the National Museum of
Ireland, she actually calls the piece completely
unique and rather eccentric. Eccentric is an
interesting choice of words. It suggests... It
doesn't quite fit the standard Art Deco mold
that was popular at the time. It really doesn't.
And that is largely because of when and how it
was made. This was absolutely not a factory production
piece. Not mass produced at all. Not even close.
Yeah. Which brings us to the actual process of
making it. And I think this is the most critical
part of understanding the intrinsic value here
way before we even start talking about the market
value. Right. Because the timeline is just shocking.
She didn't just sketch this out on a napkin and
send it off to a workshop to be built. No. Eileen
Gray spent two full years working on this one
single chair. Two years. From 1917 to 1919. That
is literally the middle of World War I and its
immediate aftermath. Exactly. She is moving between
London and Paris during these incredibly tumultuous
historical years, and she is just obsessively
working on this one. piece of furniture. And
when we say working, we mean the physical application
of the lacquer, right? Yes, the physical grueling
labor of it. Because I think people hear the
word lacquer and they automatically think of
a shiny spray paint you can grab at a hardware
store. Oh, totally. But that is not what we're
talking about here. Far from it. Traditional
Asian lacquer is a natural polymer derived from
tree sap. Tree sap. Yeah. And it is highly toxic
before it cures. It can cause terrible skin rashes
that are very similar to severe poison ivy. Oh,
wow. And on top of being toxic, it is incredibly
temperamental to work with. It requires layer
upon layer upon layer. How many layers are we
talking about? Sometimes dozens. You have to
apply a paper thin coat, let it cure, polish
it completely down, apply another thin coat.
It takes weeks, sometimes months, just to build
up that deep, lustrous finish. And the curing
conditions are super specific. This is where
that famous anecdote comes in. Yes, my favorite
part of the story. Lacquer doesn't dry by evaporation
like normal paint. It actually sets through a
chemical process that strictly requires high
humidity. Okay. So where did Eileen Gray, this
aristocratic, elegant designer, find a highly
humid environment in her early 20th century home?
Her bathroom. Her bathroom. The sources literally
describe her checking the piece in the steam
of her bathroom. polishing it by hand for days
on end. That image is just fantastic. It completely
strips away all the glamour we associate with
high -end design. It really does. It is not some
pristine, sunlit studio. It is a working artist
utilizing her own domestic space just to achieve
a chemical reaction on a piece of wood. And it
creates this incredible intimacy with the object.
When you buy this chair, you are not just buying
a cool design. You're buying the literal years
of her life spent inhaling those fumes in a damp
bathroom. polishing that surface, obsessing over
the exact curve of the dragon's body. Or the
sea monster's body. Right, exactly. It represents
a very specific era of her career too, doesn't
it? Because she eventually became super famous
for very distinct modernist architecture. Yes,
the glass and steel stuff. Oh, right, like the
famous E -2027 house. But this chair feels so
much older, so much more traditional. It is really
the pinnacle of her first phase. It is highly
expressive, very symbolic. almost mystical in
a way. Christie's catalog notes that it distills
the magical, intimately expressive phase of her
work before she shifted toward the functional
industrial modernism she is mostly known for
today. So it is a super rare artifact of early
gray. Exactly. A transitional masterpiece. OK,
so we have this rare, labor -intensive masterpiece
created in a steamy bathroom. But a masterpiece
sitting in a bathroom doesn't magically get a
$31 million price tag slapped on it. No, it definitely
does not. We need to talk about the journey this
chair took. The provenance. Provenance is the
golden ticket in the art world. It is all about
who bought it and where was it seen by other
wealthy people. Right. And the very first owner
of the dragon's armchair was Suzanne Talbot.
She was a patron of Gray's Rite. A very, very
significant one. Her real name was Madame Matthew
Levy, but she went by Suzanne Talbot. She was
a milliner, so a high -end hat maker, and just
a major, major figure in Paris fashion at the
time. Okay, so she had money and taste. Tons
of both. She actually commissioned Eileen Gray
to design the entire interior of her apartment.
which became known as the famous Glass Salon.
The Glass Salon. Even the name just sounds incredibly
expensive. It was a total landmark of interior
design in Paris. So the chair starts its life
at the very, very top of the social ladder. It
is a bespoke commission. It's placed in a famous
avant -garde salon. It gets photographed for
magazines. It has a serious pedigree from day
one. Exactly. But then, as always happens with
fashion, tastes change, Art Deco falls out of
favor, and the chair just sort of disappears
from the public consciousness for a while. He
goes dormant. basically until 1971. This is a
massive pivot point in the story. 1971. So we
are deep in the era of psychedelia, plastic furniture,
whole space age aesthetic. Shag carpets everywhere.
Exactly. Art deco at that point is basically
considered grandma's furniture by a lot of the
mainstream culture. It was totally out of fashion.
And that is exactly when the Parisian art dealer,
Cesca Valois, comes into the picture. Jessica
Valois. Yes, she finds and acquires the chair.
And the price she paid is just fascinating, given
what we know happens later. The auction records
say she paid $2 ,700. $2 ,700. I mean, I know
inflation is a real thing, but even adjusted
for inflation, that is roughly the price of a
decent used Honda Civic today. Right. It is absolutely
not the price of a museum -grade masterpiece.
It just shows that the market had not caught
up to the history yet. The scholarship on Eileen
Gray simply wasn't what it is today. To the average
eye walking past a shop in 1971, it was just
this weird, heavy old brown chair. But Jessica
Valloy clearly saw something else. She had the
eye. And more importantly, she knew exactly who
else would see something in it. Oh, yes. She
held on to it for a bit and then sold it two
years later in 1973. And the buyer was Yves Saint
Laurent. Wow. Okay, this is where the rocket
fuel gets added to the fire. It cannot be overstated
how big a deal this is. Yeah. Yves Saint Laurent
and his partner Pierre Berger were not just rich
guys buying expensive things. Right. They were
tastemakers of the highest possible order. Their
private art collection was legendary, even while
they were still actively building it. It is that
classic halo effect. If Yves Saint Laurent, the
king of fashion, decides to put this weird brown
chair in his living room, it is no longer just
an old Eileen Gray chair. No. It becomes the
chair that YSL personally chose. Precisely. His
ownership actively validates the object to the
rest of the world. It tells high society this
object is historically significant. And for nearly
40 years, that chair just sat in their private
collection. Wow. It was part of the daily backdrop
of their lives. It absorbed all the glamour and
the mythos of that household. Okay, so let us
fast forward. It is February 2009. Yves Saint
Laurent has sadly passed away. Pierre Bergé decides
he is selling the collection. The whole thing.
And it gets dubbed the sale of the century by
the press. Which is a bold claim, but it actually
lived up to it. And you have to remember the
global context here. This is February 2009. Oh,
right. The global financial markets had literally
just melted down in late 2008. The entire world
was plunging into a severe recession. Lehman
Brothers had collapsed. People were losing their
homes. You would naturally think this is the
absolute worst possible time in history to sell
luxury decorative assets. People were panicking.
Exactly. Yeah. But in the ultra high end art
world. Sometimes extreme economic uncertainty
actually drives people toward tangible physical
assets. Oh, that makes sense. Like gold. Exactly
like gold. High quality proven art becomes a
safe harbor for billionaires to park their wealth.
And the hype around this specific YSL sale was
just deafening. Where was it held? It was held
at the Grand Palais in Paris. It wasn't just
a standard auction in a quiet room. It was a
massive cultural event. So the Dragon's Chair
comes up for auction. Now, the experts at Christie's
are not flying blind here. They know it has the
YSL provenance. They know it is an Eileen Gray
original. What was their official pre -sale estimate?
They estimated it would sell for between 2 and
3 million euros. Which is a very... Solid estimate.
I mean, that is a lot of money for a chair. It
clearly acknowledges that it is a masterpiece.
It definitely acknowledges Gray's importance
and the YSL history. Yes. Two to three million
is huge. But once the actual bidding opened,
that estimate became completely irrelevant almost
immediately. So describe the room for us. What
actually happens in an auction room when a lot
like this just takes off? It basically becomes
a duel. The auctioneer starts the bidding and
the numbers just start. aggressively ticking
up. 4 million, 5 million, 10 million. My God.
At that point, the room usually goes dead silent,
but there is this thick electric tension in the
air. People are whispering on cell phones. Yeah.
You have to realize 10 million would have already
been a massive world record. But it didn't stop
there. It kept going. It just kept climbing.
15 million, 20 million. And finally, the hammer
falls. 21 million, 905 ,000 euros. Shattering
the previous world record for 20th century decorative
art by 22 million dollars. That is insane. It
didn't just break the record. It completely obliterated
it. That is the literal definition of an outlier
in the market. So who bought it? Who actually
has that kind of liquid capital and that kind
of intense desire for a brown armchair? This
is honestly the greatest twist of the whole story.
The winning buyer was Chesca Valois. Wait. the
exact same art dealer who bought it for $2 ,700
back in 1971. The very same woman. You are kidding.
No. Now, she was bidding on behalf of an unknown
third -party client. There were a lot of rumors
flying around that it was the billionaire Kravis
family, though, that has been heavily debated
and denied. But physically, she was the one sitting
in the room holding the battle. Just imagine
that feeling. She physically held this exact
object in her hands in the 70s, bought it for
the price of a used car, sold it to Yves Saint
Laurent, watched it become... this total legend
and then stood in the Grand Palais 40 years later
to buy it back at a 10 ,000 -fold markup. It
closes the historical circle so perfectly. And
her comment to the press right after the sale
is really the key to understanding this entire
deep dive. What did she say? When reporters swarmed
her and asked about the insane price, because
the whole world was asking why this amount of
money, she simply called it the price of desire.
The price of desire? That honestly feels more
like a philosophy than economics. totally is.
It essentially admits that at this stratospheric
level of wealth, We are no longer talking about
the cost of materials. We're not talking about
labor hours. We aren't even really talking about
rational financial investment anymore. Right.
We are talking about the completely irrational,
overwhelming human need to possess something
utterly unique. It is the intersection of two
very distinct types of desire, really. You have
the original desire of Eileen Gray obsessing
over this wood in her steamy bathroom for two
years, pouring her actual soul and lungs into
it. Yes. And then you have the desire of the
billionaire collector. who desperately wants
to own a piece of that artistic soul plus the
glamorous soul of Yves Saint Laurent. Exactly.
You are literally buying the narrative. You are
buying the story of the 20th century. From the
obscure artisan working in a bathroom to the
fabulous fashion icon in his Paris salon to the
sheer adrenaline of the auction house world record.
The physical chair is really just the vessel
for all that intangible history. It really makes
you wonder about the core distinction between
furniture and art. I mean, structurally, you
can sit in it. It functions perfectly well as
a chair. Sure. But at $31 million, you wouldn't
dare actually sit in it, right? Well, that is
the grand irony of it all. Eileen Gray fully
intended for her pieces to be used. She strongly
believed in design that served daily life. Right.
But the global art market has essentially transformed
her functional chair into a holy relic. It has
completely transcended its original physical
function to become pure stored capital and pure
social status. It is a little bit tragic in a
way. It is simply too expensive to ever just
be a chair again. That is often the fate of the
masterpiece. It gains historical immortality,
but it loses its everyday purpose. So let us
wrap this up. We have gone from the toxic humidity
of 1919 to the financial frenzy of 2009. We have
seen how $2 ,700 magically turned into $31 million.
And we have seen that financial value is highly
subjective, it is fluid, and it is almost entirely
dependent on the stories we as a society attach
to objects. Which leaves me with a final thought
I want to throw out to you listening right now.
We look at this Eileen Gray chair today and it
seems incredibly obvious that it is a masterpiece.
Of course. It has the rich history. It has the
unique look. It has the massive price tag to
prove it. But back in 1971, it was just sitting
there. It was just available. It was completely
overlooked. It was essentially waiting for the
rest of the world to catch up to its brilliance.
So as you go about your week. Just look around.
Look at the seemingly mundane objects in your
own life or the weird things sitting in the dusty
antique shops you walk past. We always tend to
think history is finished right. Right, that
all the great stuff is already in museums. Exactly,
that all the masterpieces have been identified
and locked away behind glass. But history is...
actively being written right now. Precisely.
If a small brown eccentric chair can suddenly
hold the price of desire simply because of whose
hands created it and whose living room it sat
in, what misunderstood eccentric overlooked object
exists out there right now, that will be the
$30 million hammer drop of the year 2109. That
really is the question. What priceless artifacts
are we casually sitting on right now? I am definitely
going to go check the manufacturing stamp on
my office chair as soon as we finish, just in
case. Thanks for joining us on this deep dive
into the 28 million euro chair. An absolute pleasure
to explore it. Catch you on the next deep dive.