The Register
48 design classics in production today, with designer, year, maker, material, price band and the detail that separates an original from a copy. Filter by category, sort by year or price, search by name.
Price bands describe a new piece from the licensed manufacturer in 2026 and are orientation, not quotation. Vintage and second-hand prices follow their own logic, which the Design section explains.
Ludwig Mies van der Rohe with Lilly Reich · Knoll
Designed for the German Pavilion at the Barcelona exposition, it settled how a modern throne looks: two curves of steel, no back legs, a cushion of forty leather panels.
How to spot an original: The maker stamps the designer's signature and its own logo into the frame. Copies are lighter, the steel thinner, the welds visible.
Charles and Ray Eames · Herman Miller, Vitra in Europe
The club chair as engineered object. Three plywood shells on aluminium spines, leather cushions that zip, and a slouch that nothing since has matched.
How to spot an original: A medallion or label under the seat with the maker's name; the ottoman is labelled separately. Copies get the shell curve and the tilt of the headrest wrong.
Marcel Breuer · Knoll
The first tubular steel chair, inspired by a bicycle handlebar. It turned a club chair into a drawing of one.
How to spot an original: Signature and logo stamped on the frame. The tube on an original is seamless and the leather is thick saddle hide.
Arne Jacobsen · Fritz Hansen
Sculpted for the lobby of the SAS Royal Hotel in Copenhagen, a room within a room that you can turn away from the world in.
How to spot an original: A label under the seat with the maker's name and a production year. The shell of a copy is thicker and the tilt mechanism does not return.
Arne Jacobsen · Fritz Hansen
The stacking chair that every school, café and kitchen in Scandinavia knows. A single sheet of bent veneer that gives when you sit.
How to spot an original: Label under the seat, and the shell is nine layers thin enough to flex. Copies use a thicker shell that does not.
Hans J. Wegner · Carl Hansen and Son
A Ming chair rethought for a Danish workshop, with the Y-shaped back that gave it its name and a seat that grows more comfortable for decades.
How to spot an original: The maker brands its logo and the designer's name under the seat frame; older pieces carry a stamp. The paper cord seat takes about 120 metres of cord and an hour to weave.
Verner Panton · Vitra
The first chair moulded in one piece of plastic, a cantilever with no legs and no joints, ten years from drawing to production.
How to spot an original: The maker's mark and the designer's name moulded under the seat. Copies flex in the wrong place and crack at the knee.
Le Corbusier, Pierre Jeanneret, Charlotte Perriand · Cassina
A reclining machine: the cradle rocks along the base to any angle, from upright to horizontal, with the head at the end that faces the room.
How to spot an original: The three signatures and a serial number engraved on the frame. The cradle on an original slides freely on the base with no fixings.
Gio Ponti · Cassina
The lightest wooden chair ever put into production, with legs of triangular section thinner than a pencil, derived from a fisherman's chair in Chiavari.
How to spot an original: The maker's mark and serial number under the seat rail. An original weighs 1.7 kilograms and can be lifted with one finger.
Eero Saarinen · Knoll
Saarinen wanted to clear up the slum of legs under every table. One stem, one shell, one cushion.
How to spot an original: Signature and logo on the base; the shell and the base of an original are two materials finished to look like one. Copies are all plastic and rock.
Harry Bertoia · Knoll
A sculptor's chair, made mostly of air. Bertoia said it was a study in space and light that happened to be sat on.
How to spot an original: The wires are welded at every crossing on an original and the seat pad clips on with hooks. Copies have fewer wires and a thinner gauge.
Alvar Aalto · Artek
Designed for a tuberculosis sanatorium so that a patient could breathe more easily in it. The scrolled birch seat is an engineering feat that looks like a gesture.
How to spot an original: A label under the seat with the maker's name; the loops of the frame are one continuous laminate on an original.
Alvar Aalto · Artek
Three legs, one seat, stackable in a spiral. Made in Finland for ninety years and still the most honest object in the catalogue.
How to spot an original: The maker's label under the seat and the patented L-leg: the bend is solid birch sawn, glued and bent, not laminated. Copies bolt straight legs to a brace.
Marcel Breuer · Knoll, Thonet
The cantilever chair with a woven seat, named after Breuer's daughter. It brought the tube into the dining room.
How to spot an original: Signature stamp on the frame from the American maker, the Thonet mark from the European. Original cane is hand-woven and the beech frame is solid.
Poul Kjærholm · Fritz Hansen
Steel and leather reduced to two profiles and a plane. Kjærholm treated steel as a natural material, and it shows.
How to spot an original: The maker's stamp on the frame and a leather that darkens evenly. The flat steel of an original is matt and cold to the touch; copies are chromed.
Philippe Starck · Kartell
A Louis XV armchair moulded in one shot of clear polycarbonate, the most copied chair of the century and still the clearest.
How to spot an original: The maker's name and the designer's moulded into the back. An original is one piece with no seam; copies are cloudy and yellow within a year.
Achille and Pier Giacomo Castiglioni · Flos
A pendant that needs no ceiling: the arc puts the light over a table two metres from the wall while the base stands by the sofa.
How to spot an original: The maker's mark on the base and a hole through the marble for a broom handle, so two people can lift it. Copies have a smaller base and a hollow arc.
Poul Henningsen · Louis Poulsen
Henningsen spent thirty years making a lamp in which the bulb can never be seen from any angle. This is the one that hangs over half the dining tables in Denmark.
How to spot an original: The maker's label inside the top shade. Original shades are three layers of graded thickness; copies use one and the bulb is visible from below.
Poul Henningsen · Louis Poulsen
Designed for a restaurant on the Copenhagen waterfront: a chandelier that lights without glare from any seat, and a sculpture when it is off.
How to spot an original: The maker's label and seventy-two leaves on twelve arches, each leaf individually mounted. Copies have fewer leaves and stamped, not spun, metal.
Isamu Noguchi · Ozeki and Co.
Traditional Gifu lantern making turned into two hundred sculptures of light. Noguchi asked for the shapes to be shipped flat and unfolded into rooms.
How to spot an original: A red sun and moon stamp on the shade and a paper label from Gifu. Copies are printed on machine paper and the ribs are plastic.
Richard Sapper · Artemide
A desk lamp balanced by weights instead of springs, positioned with a fingertip, that became the emblem of the office of the 1980s.
How to spot an original: The maker's and designer's names on the base. Current passes through the arms of an original, so there are no wires along them; copies hide a cable.
Michele De Lucchi and Giancarlo Fassina · Artemide
The desk lamp of the last thirty-five years, a fishing rod of aluminium with the balance done by a visible cable.
How to spot an original: The maker's mark on the head and a cable-and-spring balance that holds any position without a screw. Copies droop.
Vico Magistretti · Artemide
A bedside eclipse: the inner shell turns inside the outer to dim the light from full moon to new. It won the Compasso d'Oro two years later.
How to spot an original: The maker's mark under the base; the inner shell of an original rotates on a silent pivot. Copies scrape.
Vico Magistretti · Oluce
A cylinder, a cone and a hemisphere, the table lamp reduced to geometry, with the bulb hidden in the cone so the shade glows from within.
How to spot an original: The maker's label under the base. The hemisphere of an original appears to float on the cone with the join hidden.
Arne Jacobsen · Louis Poulsen
Drawn for the SAS Royal Hotel with the Egg and the Swan, its shade tilts on a joint that has not changed in seventy years.
How to spot an original: The maker's label on the base; the base of the floor version has a hollow that once held an ashtray. Copies make the shade symmetrical.
Achille and Pier Giacomo Castiglioni · Flos
An upside-down uplighter: the bulb is in the base and the glass bowl above it throws the light back down through a painted reflector.
How to spot an original: The maker's mark on the base. The glass bowl of an original is hand-blown and rests loose on the ring so it can be tilted.
Achille Castiglioni and Pio Manzù · Flos
A cable from ceiling to floor and a bent tube that slides along it to any height. It won the Compasso d'Oro and needs no switch on the wall.
How to spot an original: The maker's mark on the ceiling rose; the lamp holder of an original slides on the cable and stays by friction alone.
Verner Panton · &Tradition
Two hemispheres, one facing down and a smaller one facing up, made for the flower power years and reissued for everyone since.
How to spot an original: The maker's label inside the lower shade. Original shades are spun steel with a smooth lacquer; copies are aluminium and show a seam.
Isamu Noguchi · Herman Miller, Vitra in Europe
A sculpture that happens to hold a glass top: two identical curved pieces of wood, rotated and pinned, and a plate of glass 19 millimetres thick.
How to spot an original: The designer's signature is etched into the edge of the glass on current production, and the base carries a medallion. Copies use thinner glass and a base that does not interlock.
Eero Saarinen · Knoll
The table that goes with the chair: a single stem so that everyone at dinner has somewhere to put their legs.
How to spot an original: Signature and logo under the top, and a base whose curve continues into the top without a step. Copies have a fibreglass base that dents.
Eileen Gray · ClassiCon
Named after Gray's house on the Riviera, made so that breakfast could be eaten in bed with the table pushed over the mattress.
How to spot an original: The maker's stamp and a serial number on the frame; the height adjusts with a chain on an original. Copies fix it with a screw.
Le Corbusier, Pierre Jeanneret, Charlotte Perriand · Cassina
A dining table made of an aeroplane strut and a plate of glass, so that the room can be seen through it.
How to spot an original: Three signatures and a serial number on the base. The base of an original is aircraft-style oval tube, welded and painted.
Warren Platner · Knoll
Hundreds of curved steel rods in a moiré that Platner said was a decorative, gentle, graceful kind of design that appeared in period style.
How to spot an original: Signature and logo under the top. The rods of an original are welded to circular frames at both ends; copies rest loose.
Piet Hein, Bruno Mathsson, Arne Jacobsen · Fritz Hansen
A shape between a rectangle and an ellipse, found by a mathematician for a traffic roundabout in Stockholm and made into the best table for six.
How to spot an original: The maker's label under the top. The legs are eight steel rods held in tension; copies bolt on four.
Dieter Rams · Vitsœ
The shelving system that is bought once and added to for a lifetime. Rams designed it so that nothing about it is noticed except the books.
How to spot an original: Sold only by the maker, planned to the wall, with every part available for decades. There are no copies worth the name; there are systems that look similar and cannot be extended.
Fritz Haller and Paul Schärer · USM
A construction set for furniture, developed for a factory office and now in every architecture practice in Europe.
How to spot an original: The chromed ball at every corner is the mark; on an original it is threaded steel, and the system can be taken apart and rebuilt without tools it does not include.
Nisse Strinning · String Furniture
Two ladders of wire and a set of shelves that slot in anywhere: the lightest bookshelf ever made and the cheapest classic in the Register.
How to spot an original: The wire side panels of an original are welded at every crossing and coated; copies are thinner and bend under books.
Ettore Sottsass · Memphis Milano
The totem of the Memphis group: a bookcase that refuses to be one, in laminates that were meant to be vulgar and became precious.
How to spot an original: A numbered plate from the maker, and the laminates are the original patterns; a reproduction laminate is the first sign of a copy.
Anna Castelli Ferrieri · Kartell
Round stacking modules for a bedside or a bathroom, made in one plastic since 1967 and in the collection of every design museum that has one.
How to spot an original: The maker's name moulded into the base. The modules of an original stack with a satisfying click; copies rattle.
Mario Bellini · B&B Italia
A landscape of cushions that clip together in any shape. The name means chameleon; the reissue proved the appetite for the 1970s was real.
How to spot an original: The maker's label and the cable-and-hook connectors that let any module join any other. Since the 2020 reissue the foam is a new formulation; vintage pieces will have been re-foamed.
Michel Ducaroy · Ligne Roset
A sofa with no frame at all, a folded caterpillar of quilted foam that sits low enough to be a child's favourite and comfortable enough to be an adult's.
How to spot an original: The maker's label sewn into the cover, and the foam is quilted in graded densities. Copies flatten within a year.
Le Corbusier, Pierre Jeanneret, Charlotte Perriand · Cassina
Cushions in a cage: the frame is on the outside and the seat is five loose cushions. Its designers called it the machine for sitting.
How to spot an original: Three signatures and a serial number engraved on the frame. The cushions of an original are feather and foam and sit inside the frame, not on it.
George Nelson Associates, Irving Harper · Herman Miller, Vitra in Europe
A sofa made of eighteen upholstered discs on a frame, so odd that its first production run was tiny and its second, forty years later, sold out.
How to spot an original: The maker's label under the frame. Eighteen discs on an original, each removable; copies use fewer and fix them.
Philippe Starck · Alessi
A citrus squeezer drawn on a pizzeria napkin that became the most argued-about object of its decade: a rocket, a spider, a sculpture, and only occasionally a squeezer.
How to spot an original: The maker's name cast into the leg. An original is polished aluminium that is not anodised, and it does not actually juice lemons well, which is authentic.
Michael Graves · Alessi
The post-modern kettle: a cone of steel, a blue handle and a bird, and the best-selling object its maker has ever produced.
How to spot an original: The maker's mark on the base and the small red bird on the spout that sings when the water boils. Copies get the bird wrong.
George Nelson Associates, Irving Harper · Vitra
A clock with no numbers, twelve balls on spokes, and the first of a series that put the clock back on the wall as an object.
How to spot an original: The maker's label on the back and solid painted wood balls; copies are plastic and the spokes are hollow.
Alvar Aalto · Iittala
A wave of glass drawn for the Savoy restaurant in Helsinki, blown by hand for ninety years, and the shape most people picture when they picture a vase.
How to spot an original: The designer's signature etched on the base and a sticker from the maker. Blown in a wooden or steel mould, so the wall thickness varies; pressed copies are uniform.
Ettore Sottsass · Poltronova
A mirror shaped like a woman's hair, lit pink from inside, that waited fifty years to become the most photographed object of a decade.
How to spot an original: Numbered by the maker, with a certificate. The pink neon of an original glows through the fibreglass evenly; copies use LEDs that show as points.