Designing Auctions
Anything can be sold at an auction, including Burundian tea, license plates, the right to pollute, or chunks of the electromagnetic spectrum, which phone companies find alluring. Beside these an auction of modern design objects is straightforward: they’re refined and made with care, so they have value;
but there are lots of them, and they’re functional, so they fetch lower prices.
When Marianne Brandt’s silver plated tea infuser was auctioned off for $361,000 in 2007, it raised eyebrows. It shouldn’t have. As a rare 1920s prototype made in the Bauhaus studios yet never put into production, it fulfilled the criteria of uniqueness and fetishism that gets collectors (and prices) going. And it told a good story: a Bauhaus student becomes a master metalworker, but spends her last 40 years in GDR obscurity behind an iron curtain. That price looks low to me.
If auctioning design is so tough, it’s time to think about redesigning auctions. Auctions are commercial formats, like shops and markets. Their success, argues Paul Klemperer, depends on the principles of anti-trust. Basically, that there be open entry and no collusion, full disclosure and no price-fixing, a level playing field. Auction theory also warns against the “winner’s curse”, the purchaser’s sinking feeling that he’s outbid rivals by too much. Auction success is about commercial happiness.
This sets up the fun possibility where a designer could design the same auction where his work
is being sold. Which wouldn’t be any different from designing a shop for a brand selling objects
you’ve designed.
Jeffrey Swartz