Christie's «The Chair» sale held on May 11th 1999 in London was a great success as it realised £ 1,3 million (over US $ 2,1 million) with 62% of lots sold. Christie's salesroom was packed for the occasion and the crowd almost roared when a Rennie Mackintosh black oak armchair made around 1900 for the billiard room of a Glasgow café fetched £ 155,000 (US $ 257,170) against a £ 30,000-40,000 estimate.
A wood armchair made by G. A Van de Groenekan after a carton by Dutch designer Gerrit van Rietveld, around 1918, consisting of 13 square wood blocks and two rectangular planks pour the seat and the back (only three models were made), fetched £ 133,500 (US $ 213,165). This piece, which bore testimony of the links Rietveld had with the De Stijl movement and Piet Mondrian, had been sold for just under US $ 80,000 in November 1986 by Christie's in Amsterdam.
A square armchair by Austrian designer Koloman Moser with mosaic decor, one the best known objects of the Austrian Secession period induced a bidding battle between two private American collectors while Marcel Breuer's famous metallic tubular chair called «Wassily Model B3», designed in 1925, went for £ 56,500 (US $ 90,659). A similar price was recorded for the steel chromed and leather «Barcelona» chair conceived by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe as a throne for the King and Queen of Spain, which was exhibited in the German pavillion at the Barcelona International Fair in 1929.
Two armchairs called «Red Polar Bears» by Jean Royère, of circa 1951, went for £ 84,000 (US $ 134,700) against an estimate of £ 15,000-20,000 but a deck chair by Eileen Gray, which fetched US $ 231,000 at Sotheby's in May 1989 in New York, remained unsold at £ 52,000. It must however be noted that Sotheby's sold two similar chairs in 1991 for about US $ 63,500 each in 1991, thus at a more reasonable altitude.
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