Design Desks: The Market, from Prouvé's Compas to 1970s Tops

Long the poor relation of the design auctions, the desk has been revalued all at once: five years of remote work have made it the centrepiece of the home again — and the market has followed.

The peaks

Jean Prouvé's Compas desk (1948) is the benchmark: folded-sheet-steel legs, a clean top, hammer prices from €15,000 to €60,000 depending on the variant — with a Vitra reissue at around €4,000. The Italian presidential desks of the 1950s and 60s — Borsani for Tecno, Ico Parisi, floating rosewood tops — have settled between €3,000 and €15,000. A notch below, Mathieu Matégot's perforated-metal desks and the Strafor administrative lecterns ride the wave of French industrial furniture.

The clever middle ground

Scandinavian teak desks of the 1960s, with suspended drawer units, remain the best way in: €400–1,200 for fine Danish pieces, half that for anonymous production. Solid, repairable, resaleable — the exact opposite of the contemporary panel desk.

What sets the price

The original top (a redone veneer halves the value), complete drawer units with their keys, the maker's label. And the depth: older desks less than 65 cm deep, conceived for writing, trade better — they fit into today's flats.

Spotted a desk at a sale or in a photo? Scan it on Beyit: attribution, period, value.