Chairs for Charity

Product design

Our fleeting existence is made painfully clear by a chair designed by the late Ed Annink to be auctioned next week.

By Editor Design.nl /asdf 04-10-2012

For a charity auction to be held next week on 10 October, the late Ed Annink had a classical reading chair upholstered by artist Christie van der Haak, and then designed a folding screen to protect the chair from too much scrutiny. Users of the chair can store their personal belongings such as newspapers or magazines in 33 felted bags on the inside of the screen.

The Charity Auction is organized by the Venduehuis in The Hague. Fourteen leading Dutch designers have been invited to select an antique chair from the Venduehuis’ own collection and use it as inspiration to create a new object. Proceeds from all sales of this Chairs for Charity event will go to a charity selected by the designer.

Other participating designers include Maarten Baas, Richard Hutten, Kiki van Eijk and Dirk van der Kooij. “All designers we asked responded with great enthusiasm,” says Tim Erpenbeek de Wolff, director at the auction house.

Erpenbeek de Wolff admits that auctioning design will never be a cash cow, but “So called ‘new antiques’ are entering the premises these days and there [is always] a story”, he says, “which is interesting for an auction house.”

Apart from the charity-project, this first design auction by the Venduehuis features a century of design products. Ther is everything from heavy wooden art-deco furniture from the 1920’s by KPC de Basel, chairs by Mies van der Rohe and Charles & Ray Eames as well as the knotted chair by Marcel Wanders.

The publicly stated goal of the auction house is to become the first design auction house in the Netherlands.

Sadly Ed Annink - who nominated the Dutch Cancer Society as the recipient of money earned from his project - lost his own battle with cancer on September 25. "I worked with him a lot over the past few months," says Erpenbeek de Wolff. "He was so optimistic and positive. We were very inspired by his ideas."

Images top to bottom:

Ed Annink for KWF Kankerbestrijding (Dutch Cancer Society)
Kiki van Eijk for Bomenstichting (Tree Foundation)
Richard Hutten for Warchild