Collected, Not Decorated: Why Curated Furniture Is the New Luxury –and How to Begin Collecting Today
- Nina Yasavul
- May 13
- 3 min read
Updated: May 13
If yesterday’s luxury sparkled beneath showroom spotlights, today it breathes in the hush between textures. In 2025, prestige is the soft bruise of patina on a brass pull, the sling chair whose saddle leather has sipped decades of sun, the walnut console that sailed from Stockholm to Sausalito before mooring itself beneath your art. Luxury, like good conversation, whispers—never shouts.
The Rise of Collectable Furniture
Numbers rarely feel romantic, yet even the data has heart. The global vintage‑and‑second‑hand furniture market was valued at USD 34 billion in 2023 and is projected to grow 7.7 % annually through 2030—beating the drum of mass‑manufacture at its own game. Behind the uptick lies our collective hunger for objects with biography.
In an algorithmic era where AI churns out symphonies before coffee is brewed, the true treasure is evidence of a human hand: dovetail joints a robot can’t feel, brushstrokes no neural net can misplace twice.
How Rossana Orlandi and Nina Yashar inflused the interior design arena with curated and collectable furniture.
This impulse is hardly new. Early‑2000s Milan crackled when Nina Yashar debuted her palimpsest of Giò Ponti relics and contemporary commissions at Nilufar Gallery during Salone del Mobile. Almost simultaneously, Rossana Orlandi opened her tie‑factory‑turned‑temple to limited‑edition design. Their curatorial alchemy reframed furniture as collectible art—and the spark leapt oceans.
Our favourite selections from Collectable Furnitures
Today, collector‑led galleries in New York, Miami, Los Angeles, and San Francisco prove that singularity has eclipsed gloss as the ultimate status symbol. And whispering beneath them all is the inexhaustible hum of the Paris flea markets—especially the storied Marché aux Puces de Saint‑Ouen.
For decades, decorators have filled containers there with Maison Jansen consoles and bamboo étagères, sending them across oceans and social feeds alike. The flea became an international classroom in connoisseurship, its ever‑rising price tags foreshadowing today’s global appetite for the one‑of‑one.
Design Alchemy at Nina Design Co.
At Nina Design Co., we choreograph decades. Picture a 1960s Percival Lafer sling chair lounging beside a rippled side table hand‑thrown by a Bay‑Area ceramicist; or a Florence Knoll credenza basking in redwood‑filtered light. That tension between memory and modernity is what renders a room lived‑in, soulful, subtly elevated—the very promise woven into every line of our homepage.
Clients often lean in: How do we budget for that kind of magic? Truth? Magic is math with poetry.
Investment vs. Impulse: The 30 / 70 Rule
My rhythm for every project: allocate 30 % of the furnishings budget to forever icons and 70 % to fluid layers.
30 % — Legacy: Pieces that accrue value in both price and patina—Vodder chests, Noguchi lanterns, heirloom kilims.
70 % — Living Layers: Upholstery that can weather soccer cleats, lamps whose shades may spin seasons, art prints that evolve with mood.
Guest‑Room Snapshot – Budget $15,000$4,500 → Hans Wegner wishbone chairs + vintage tiger‑oak nightstands (legacy)$10,500 → bedding, paint, lighting, hardware, art (layers)
Spotlight – Oakland Hills Mediterranean House
Even an outdoor corridor can become a sonnet. For our Oakland Hills Mediterranean House, we paved the walkway with antique limestone tiles reclaimed from a Provençal estate, each anchored by a charcoal basalt diamond.
The lower walls and a built‑in planter are wrapped in an elongated dark‑green subway brick, its glaze echoing the tongue‑and‑groove ceiling washed in the same verdant hue.
Vintage American brass sconces from Gallery L7 punctuate the lime‑plastered walls, casting a halo over fronds of palms and feathery ferns that guide guests toward the arched walnut door.
Stone murmurs to brick, brass catches twilight, limewash inhales the afternoon—and suddenly this in‑between space feels timeless.
This is our craft: knowing when to let one element sing and how to weave the chorus around it.
Our picks from Oakland Hills Mediterranean House Project
Actionable Takeaways – Start Your Collection This Weekend
Curate your digital scout. Download Chairish, LiveAuctioneers and EstateSales.net, 1stbids for real‑time treasure alerts.
Want our favourite sources? Bookmark these gallery darlings—Future Perfect, MidCenturyLA, AGO Projects, Magen H Gallery, R & Company NYC, Bossa Furniture, Nilufar Gallery, Love House, Mode_Singulier, Cooler Gallery, Una Malan, 1stbids and Work in Progress—for pieces worth experiencing in person (or at least in high‑res).
Train your eye. Study the gestures of design legends: Perriand’s honest joinery, Gray’s tubular grace, Tenreiro’s feather‑light curves. Screenshot, compare, repeat.
Protect provenance. Photograph maker’s marks, archive receipts, slip a note beneath re‑upholstered seats—future custodians will thank you.
Our favourite selections from Collectable Furnitures
Invitation
Ready to chase that once‑in‑a‑lifetime credenza? Book a Day with a Designer—an in‑person sourcing tour through Oakland’s hidden warehouses or a virtual hunt from anywhere on the map. Together, we’ll compose the next chapter of your space.
With patina‑loving warmth,
Nina Yasavul
Bay Area interior designer & founder, Nina Design Co.
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