Örnsbergsauktionen is the artist operated auction house for studio produced design and craft, located in Örnsberg, Stockholm. This is the catalogue of the 2016 auction. From the foreword by Andreas Nobel: Auction catalogues bear a unique historic value simply because they are not produced for historic reasons. The auction catalogue does not have any aspiration to knowledge, it only contains what the auction house determines that the customer wants. This disparity makes a viewing of for e.g. design from the 20th century, at an auction house, a significantly more dissonant and unpredictable affair than a corresponding exhibition at a museum. More dissonant and therefore a little closer to the truth, more historically correct. Since the aim of the exhibition/viewing isn’t educational it gives the patrons an other, often overlooked, form of knowledge, a more experience- and design based knowledge. This is not about categorizing and systematizing an epoch but about experiencing the epoch’s full diversity and complexity. This deeper knowledge can probably never be gained through simplified representations, but rather demands complicated and contradictory presentations. You now have the 2016 catalogue from Örnsbergsauktionen in your hands. A congratulation is in order and the further away from 2016 you are the luckier you can count yourself because in the league of dissonant auction catalogues Örnsbergsauktionen takes the cake. It makes catalogues from the bigger and more established auction houses look like regular exhibition catalogues from a traditional design museum.
