Madonna’s Chair May Fetch 700,000 Pounds in Design-Art Sale

By Scott Reyburn, April 29 (Bloomberg) -- Marc Newson’s “Lockheed Lounge” aluminum chair, once used by Madonna in a video clip, will be among the lots providing London auction houses’ first test of the market for “design art” in 2009.

The futuristic riveted lounger was featured in the 1993 video of the star’s single “Rain,” said the Phillips de Pury auction house. It is expected to fetch as much as 700,000 pounds ($1 million) tomorrow.

“It’s the seminal piece of contemporary design,” Kenny Schachter, a London-based dealer in contemporary art and design, said in an interview. “Everything in the market is measured against this. It’s traded as regularly as an IBM share.”

Demand for cutting-edge furniture created by leading architects and designers such as Newson, Ron Arad, Zaha Hadid and the Campana Brothers has cooled after price rises during the recent contemporary-art boom.

The chair, one of four artist’s proofs, failed to sell in 1999 at Christie’s International in London when it was offered with an estimate of 35,000 pounds to 50,000 pounds.

Another version of the Australian-born, London-based designer’s 1988 limited-edition divan ignited the auction market for contemporary furniture in June 2006 when it sold at Sotheby’s, New York, for a record $968,000. Another pushed the record up to 748,500 pounds at Christie’s, London, in October 2007.

Sotheby’s first sale in London focusing on “design art” was held in October 2008. Only half of the 46 lots found buyers.