Design Auction | Örnsbergsauktionen

The Örnsbergsauktionen – the fourth edition is happening right now – has proven to be a successful, inspirational take on design. This Stockholm-based auction house for design and craft has turned from a slightly experimental platform into a real deal as a new way of engaging with buying and selling design.  Its appeal lies in the fact that it connects experimental design with an audience that is fully aware of its value: it knows what design is, how it works and knows that supporting independent designers is of primordial importance.

This year, the inclusion criteria were even more limited then before: participants should be self-producing designers that produce on small scale, but  with a focus on contemporary design. All selected designers have unique practices, use their own invented methods or work as a collective.

In a world where design is usually turned into a mass-produced, big money economy, The Örnsberg Auction focusses on the community around self-producing designers and makers. It combines a diverse range of objects, while gathering in audience or community around this working method. As journalist Julie Cirelli puts it: “The auction presents not only an ideological but an economic paradigm shift, wherein costs, prices and commissions are transparent. Knowing who is paid, why and how much should not be subversive, but it is, and Örnsberg’s is a standard to which the rest of the industry should be held.”