Vintage or Reissue?

Plenty of the great twentieth-century designs are back in production, licensed and legitimate. So when does vintage make sense over a reissue?

Buy the reissue when you want warranty, current-code wiring, a fabric you chose yourself, and a twelve-week lead time you can plan a renovation around. Reissues from the licensed makers are well built. There's no shame in them.

Buy vintage when the original materials matter — that old-growth timber and hand work again — or when the piece was never reissued, or when you want the one thing a reissue cannot ship: evidence of a life. Patina is information. It says the piece has already survived fifty years of actual use, which is the best durability report there is.

Never buy the knockoff. Not for ethics alone — the proportions are always slightly wrong, the materials always slightly worse, and the piece announces both forever. A good unattributed vintage piece costs about the same and is actually something.

The shop deals in the vintage side of this equation, obviously. But an honest answer beats a convenient one.