Christie’s Taps Former Apple Inc. Designer Jony Ive for New Rostrum

Jony Ive is arguably the world’s most well-known product designer, famed for all the iMacs, iPods, iPhones, and Apple Watches he conceived during his nearly three-decade tenure with Apple Inc. Now, he can claim one major contribution to the art world as well.

Christie’s tapped LoveFrom, the design collective Ive founded with Marc Newson in 2019 soon after he left Apple, to design a new rostrum for the auction house. This sleek object, made of oak sourced from the same French forest that controversially supplied the wood used to rebuild the Notre-Dame cathedral in Paris, was unveiled at Christie’s London headquarters yesterday.

It replaces Christie’s original mahogany rostrum—the raised platform behind which the auctioneer stands—which was designed by the famous English woodworker Thomas Chippendale in the 1700s for James Christie, who founded his namesake auction house in 1766. Replicas of the Chippendale version have been used at Chrstie’s numerous international headquarters for the past 260 years.

According to a report by the Art Newspaper, the original rostrum was destroyed in 1941 during the Blitz, when Christie’s King Street location in London—the same place where the new design was presented to the public—was bombed.

In a statement, Christie’s said that “there was no other choice than Sir Jony Ive” when it came time to re-design this ubiquitous piece of auction house furniture.

A representative from Christie’s told ARTnews that LoveFrom worked closely with Christie’s auctioneers throughout the design process. “One of the most important things to get right was the sound of the gavel on the wood. That moment when the hammer goes down and the auctioneer calls ‘SOLD’ needed to resonate. The sound of the gavel, crisp and sharp, is part of the magic. During the design process we all felt it needed more depth, so they made some changes to the wood grain to get it perfect.”

The new rostrums, with a contemporary rounded look that one can’t help but note resembles some of Ive’s iconic tech products, will be rolled out across Christie’s other headquarters throughout the year.