OntwerperFrench
Philippe Starck
5 actieve items
There is a lemon squeezer shaped like a rocket-powered spider that sits on kitchen counters around the world, less useful for extracting juice than for announcing that its owner cares about design. The Juicy Salif, sketched by Philippe Starck on a pizzeria napkin on the Amalfi coast in 1987 and produced by Alessi, is perhaps the most famous industrial design object of the late twentieth century. It is also a perfect introduction to Starck's philosophy: that design should provoke, delight, and be accessible to everyone.
Born in Paris in 1949, the son of an aeronautical engineer, Starck grew up crawling under drawing tables, absorbing the idea that elegance and rigour could coexist. He studied interior architecture at the Ecole Nissim de Camondo and founded his first company in 1968, producing inflatable objects. Through the 1970s he designed Parisian nightclub interiors, building a reputation for spirited, unconventional spaces. The breakthrough came in 1983 when President François Mitterrand, on the advice of Culture Minister Jack Lang, commissioned Starck to redesign the private apartments of the Elysee Palace. He was 34.
The Cafe Costes chair (1981), designed for Jean-Louis Costes's eponymous Parisian brasserie, launched Starck's furniture career. Its three-legged silhouette, produced by Driade's Aleph division, became an icon of 1980s design. What followed was an extraordinary partnership with Italian manufacturing: chairs for Kartell (the Louis Ghost, a transparent polycarbonate reinterpretation of a Louis XVI armchair, has sold over two million units), lighting for Flos (the Ara lamp, the Bon Jour, the Gun lamp), tables for Driade, and household objects for Alessi. Each design balanced wit with function, democratising good form at price points from 50 to 5,000 euros.
Starck's concept of "democratic design" insists that quality aesthetics should not be the preserve of the wealthy. The Louis Ghost chair costs around 250 euros and furnishes cafes, hotels, and homes on every continent. His Bon Jour Unplugged lamp for Flos (2015) pioneered the rechargeable portable table lamp category that has since become ubiquitous. Over a career spanning more than fifty years, he has produced over 10,000 designs across furniture, lighting, consumer electronics, yachts, and architecture.
On Auctionist, 149 Starck items are indexed across Nordic and European houses, with Stockholms Auktionsverk and Bukowskis in Stockholm handling the largest volumes alongside German house Quittenbaum. Chairs and armchairs account for over half the inventory (76 items), followed by lighting (17) and table lamps (14). A set of ten "245" chairs for Cassina holds the top result at SEK 20,000, while Kartell Masters chairs and Driade Mickville tables trade in the SEK 8,000-9,000 range. For anyone furnishing a Scandinavian interior with design-world pedigree at accessible prices, Starck's secondary market offers exceptional value.