What mid-century modern means, and why it sells now
Mid-century modern is the furniture made roughly between the late 1940s and the early 1970s in the clean, low, plain style that followed the war: tapered legs, walnut and teak veneers, sculpted plywood, molded fiberglass, chrome and glass, and very little ornament. It was the ordinary furniture of a great many American houses, bought new by people who are now in their eighties and nineties, and it is coming out of those houses every weekend. Unlike most of what comes out with it, buyers want it.
The demand is real and has lasted long enough that it is not a fad. The pieces fit small apartments, they are solidly made, the style photographs well, and a generation that does not want a mahogany dining set will pay for a walnut one. That has made it one of the few categories of furniture that regularly sells at an estate sale for more than the family expected, and the one category where a company that does not know the makers will leave money on the table. The guide to antique furniture value explains how badly the older, darker furniture in the same house has fared by comparison.
Two cautions before the good news. Not every piece from the period is worth much: a great deal of mid-century furniture was cheaply made, and a low dresser with a laminate top from a discount store in 1965 is a low dresser with a laminate top. And the market is regional. A piece that draws a crowd in a large city may sit in a small town where nobody is searching for the maker's name. Prices below are shapes, not figures, and all of them depend on condition, maker and local demand.
The makers and designers buyers look for
The premium in this category is almost entirely about who made the piece, and a label or a mark can multiply the price of an otherwise identical chair many times over. Buyers search by name, and these are the names they search for.
- Herman Miller, the American manufacturer of designs by Charles and Ray Eames (the molded plywood and fiberglass chairs, the lounge chair and ottoman), George Nelson (the platform bench, the "bubble" lamps, the ball clock, the wall units and case pieces) and Isamu Noguchi (the glass-topped coffee table). Labels are usually a paper or foil label or a medallion underneath.
- Knoll, which produced Eero Saarinen's tulip tables and chairs and womb chair, Harry Bertoia's wire chairs, Florence Knoll's credenzas and sofas, and Mies van der Rohe's Barcelona chair. Labels are typically stamped on the underside or a fabric tag.
- Danish and Scandinavian makers: pieces designed by Hans Wegner, Finn Juhl, Arne Jacobsen, Børge Mogensen and their contemporaries, and the teak and rosewood credenzas, dining sets and chairs produced by the Danish furniture cooperatives and workshops. Look for a burned-in mark, a metal medallion or a "Made in Denmark" stamp inside a drawer or under a seat. Unattributed Danish teak still sells well on its own.
- The American factories whose lines are now collected: Lane's Acclaim series with its dovetail-patterned veneer, Broyhill's Brasilia and Sculptra lines, Drexel's Declaration and Profile, Heywood-Wakefield's blond birch, Kent Coffey's Perspecta, Bassett's Artisan, and pieces by Stanley, Dixie, American of Martinsville, Dillingham and Founders. Most have a stamp or a paper label inside a top drawer or on the back panel.
- Designers whose names carry a premium across makers: Paul McCobb (Planner Group and Directional), Milo Baughman (Thayer Coggin), Adrian Pearsall (Craft Associates), Jens Risom, Edward Wormley (Dunbar), T.H. Robsjohn-Gibbings (Widdicomb), Vladimir Kagan, George Nakashima, Sam Maloof, and the studio woodworkers who followed them. A signed Nakashima or Maloof piece is a specialist auction lot, not an estate sale item.
This list is a starting point, not a boundary. A piece with no name on it can still be well made, well designed and worth a good price, and a buyer at the sale will judge it on its own merits. The names are what let you set the price with confidence before the sale rather than learning what it was worth from whoever bought it.
Reading labels, marks and construction
The label is the first thing to look for and it is usually hidden. Pull the top drawer all the way out and look at its sides and underside, look at the back panel of a case piece, turn a chair over and check the seat frame and the underside of the seat, and look under a tabletop near the apron. Labels were paper, foil, cloth, a burned-in stamp, an ink stamp or a metal medallion, and many have faded or half peeled away. Photograph whatever you find before the piece is moved.
What to note for each piece
- Every label, stamp, medallion or number, photographed where it sits, and the words on it
- The wood and the finish: teak, walnut, rosewood, birch, oak, or a laminate over particleboard
- Construction: dovetailed or joined drawers, solid wood drawer sides, finished backs, the weight of the piece
- Condition, honestly: veneer chips and lifts, water rings, sun fading, loose joints, replaced hardware, reupholstery, pet and smoke damage
- Whether all parts are present: leaves for a table, shelves and pins, cushions, the ottoman for a lounge chair, keys
- Anything the family knows about where and when it was bought
Construction tells you what a missing label cannot. Good pieces of the period have solid wood drawer sides with real joinery, finished back panels, veneers with matched grain on real wood cores, and a weight that surprises you. Cheap pieces have stapled drawers, cardboard backs, printed woodgrain on laminate, and particleboard that shows at any chip. Hardware is a clue too: original pulls in the maker's design are worth keeping; replacements from a hardware store lower the price and are worth mentioning rather than hiding. The guide to finding out whether something is valuable shows how to turn a name and a photograph into a sold-price range in a few minutes.
The pieces that draw buyers
Within the category, some forms sell far better than others, and it helps to know which before deciding what to keep, what to sell on the floor and what to send elsewhere.
- Credenzas and sideboards, especially long, low ones in teak or walnut with sliding doors or tambours. The single most searched-for form.
- Dressers and highboys with sculpted drawer fronts, and the nine-drawer lowboys that double as media consoles.
- Lounge chairs, with or without their ottomans, and the sculptural armchairs by the named designers. Original upholstery in good condition is a plus; worn original fabric is often preferred to a poor reupholstery.
- Dining chairs in sets of six or eight, and dining tables with their leaves. A set of chairs sells for more than the sum of the chairs.
- Small tables and lighting: nesting tables, side tables, floor and table lamps by the named makers, and the ceramic and glass table lamps of the period.
- Desks, bar carts, coat racks, wall units and room dividers, all scarcer than case pieces and all sought.
What sells less well: large sofas (hard to move, often reupholstered badly), heavy bedroom sets in the darker, more traditional lines of the same decades, colonial revival and "Mediterranean" pieces that are the same age but not the same style, and anything in laminate. The guide to what sells best at estate sales puts furniture beside the rest of the house.
Condition, refinishing and the mistakes that cost money
Condition sets the price within a maker's range, and the biggest single mistake a family makes with a good piece is to fix it. Buyers in this category want the original finish, the original hardware and, often, the original fabric, and they will pay a specialist to restore a piece properly. What they will not pay for is a piece somebody has already "restored" with a can of stain and a weekend.
Do not refinish, paint or reupholster a good piece before selling it
A sanded and re-stained walnut credenza has lost the original finish that buyers pay a premium for, and a painted one has lost most of its value outright. Veneers of the period are thin, and one pass with a sander goes through them. Clean the piece with a damp cloth and a mild soap, oil teak lightly if it is dry, tighten a loose leg if you can do it without marking anything, and leave everything else to the buyer.
What a buyer will accept, and price in: light wear, small veneer chips on edges, a faded top, a water ring, a sagging seat, worn fabric. What lowers the price sharply: a lifted or missing area of veneer, a cracked or split top, a broken joint, a replaced top, missing doors or shelves, heavy smoke or pet odor, and a previous refinishing. A piece that is structurally sound and honestly worn is, in this market, worth more than the same piece refinished by a careless hand. Say what is wrong on the tag; the buyers know the forms and will find it anyway.
How to price it at an estate sale
Research is the same as for anything else: find sold prices for the same maker, line and form, in comparable condition, and give the most weight to recent sales in your part of the country. Asking prices on the design marketplaces are often two or three times what pieces sell for, and an estate sale is not a showroom with a return policy; a buyer expects a discount for taking a piece home today, as found. The rough tiers:
| The piece | Where the price sits | What moves it |
|---|---|---|
| Unlabeled, ordinary construction, period style | Modest; sells on looks and usefulness | Wood, form, condition, whether it photographs well |
| Labeled American factory lines, unattributed Danish teak | Well above ordinary furniture of the same size | The line, completeness, original finish and hardware |
| Named designers at the major makers, signed Danish pieces | Often the highest tickets in the house | Designer, maker, model, original condition, provenance |
| Studio and rare pieces | A specialist auction matter | Authentication, documentation, the right buyers |
An estate sale company that knows the category will price the labeled pieces firmly, photograph them for the listing with the maker's name in the text, and hold the price on the first day; the buyers who search by name come early and pay full price, and a discount on day two is for what they left. Ask at the walk-through whether the company knows the makers in the house, and listen for names. A company that calls a Danish credenza "a nice wood cabinet" in its listing will draw the wrong crowd at the wrong price. The guide to pricing common household items has rules of thumb for the rest of the furniture, and the guide to what not to do before an estate sale covers why the good pieces should not leave the house before they are priced.
Estate sale, auction house, dealer or online
For most houses the estate sale is the right place, because the buyers for labeled American lines and Danish teak are local, they come to sales, and the piece is sold and gone in a weekend with no shipping. Two other routes suit the top of the range. An auction house with a design or modern department takes pieces by the named designers and the studio makers, charges a seller's commission and fees, and reaches the collectors who set prices for that work; the guide to estate sale versus auction shows how to compare the net. A dealer specializing in the period will buy outright and quickly, for less than a sale might bring, and that is a fair trade when you have a sold-price range to measure the offer against.
Selling online yourself reaches a national audience for a scarce piece, but furniture is heavy, freight is expensive, and the family is then handling photographs, questions, packing and the risk of damage in transit. It makes sense for a chair; it rarely makes sense for a credenza. If the family is running its own sale, the listing can carry the makers' names and draw the same buyers, and a family can list its own sale free here with its own page and up to 200 photos.
Reissues, reproductions and what is not vintage
Because the names carry the price, the names get copied. Three kinds of piece are easy to mistake for vintage. Licensed reissues are the original designs still made by the original manufacturers, sold new; they are well made, they carry a current label, and they sell used for less than a vintage example. Unlicensed reproductions copy the form without the license and are usually lighter, with different hardware, poorer veneers and no maker's mark, or a mark that does not match the real one. And a great deal of new furniture is simply made in the style and sold as such, with no claim to anything.
The checks are the same ones that find a good piece: the label and its wording, the construction, the weight, the hardware, and whether the wear is where forty years of use would put it. A pristine "vintage" piece with a crisp paper label and no wear on the drawer runners is worth a second look. The guide to spotting fakes and reproductions covers the categories most often copied, and the buyers' guide to buying furniture at an estate sale shows what an experienced buyer is checking, which is useful to know from the other side of the tag.
What to do next
Walk through the house and pull every drawer. Photograph each label, note the wood, the construction and the condition, and look up sold prices for anything with a name. Decide what the family keeps, then set the price on the rest before any relative or neighbor takes a piece "nobody wanted". Do not refinish anything.
When you are ready to hear from companies near you, describe the estate once and local companies will reach out to you, free. Mention the makers you found; a company that knows them will say so.
Frequently asked questions
How do I know if my furniture is mid-century modern?
Look at the style and the date. Pieces from roughly the late 1940s to the early 1970s with tapered legs, low clean lines, walnut or teak veneer, sculpted drawer fronts, molded plywood or fiberglass, and little ornament are what buyers mean by the term. Pull the top drawer and check the back and underside for a maker's label, which tells you who made it and whether it carries a premium.
Is mid-century modern furniture worth money?
Often, and more than most other furniture in the same house. Labeled pieces from the major makers and the named designers, Danish teak, and the collected American factory lines sell well; unlabeled but well-made pieces sell on their looks. What any piece brings depends on the maker, the form, condition and local demand, and laminate or cheaply built pieces from the same years are worth little.
Should I refinish mid-century furniture before selling it?
No. Buyers pay a premium for the original finish and hardware, and an amateur refinishing lowers the price sharply; period veneers are thin enough that one pass with a sander can go through them. Clean the piece, oil dry teak lightly, tighten anything loose, and leave restoration to the buyer.
Where is the label on mid-century furniture?
Usually inside or under the top drawer, on the back panel of a case piece, under a chair seat or on the seat frame, or under a tabletop near the apron. It may be paper, foil, cloth, an ink or burned stamp, or a metal medallion, and it is often faded or partly gone. Photograph whatever you find before the piece is moved.
Should I sell mid-century furniture at an estate sale or at auction?
At the estate sale for labeled factory lines and Danish teak, where local buyers come early and the piece is gone in a weekend. At an auction house with a design department for pieces by the named designers and studio makers, where the collectors who set those prices are bidding. Compare the auction's net after commission and fees against the company's price before deciding.