Bootleg USM terlet is probably the ultimate test; there is a guy named Guido Zimmerman, thoughts on Salone—& Auction Observer 109

Ottawa Senators and Passover eve playoff edition

Howdy folks, medium to light week for auctions, everyone is either in Milan or preparing for Passover—some, indeed, are both. A few selected thoughts, however:

• Tariffs are on pause now again and one has to wonder if there’s any benefit or damage or any effect on folks who only buy vintage. I am sure there is in a long-tail way (butter was about to be $11) but the Chad economics here is that buying used things off non-retail websites.. not to go Thomas Friedman but means you are less affected.

• Magasin
  with a nice runown of Salone here (Bally is back; The Row has housewares) and here:

  347: MDW Days 3 + 4 / It's 6 AM somewhere

  I am curious about the USM bathroom:

  humanrace

  

  A post shared by @humanrace

  but as of yet no one can confirm to me whether there is a TERLET. Is there a USM terlet? Fellas, you go to her house and there’s a USM terlet in the foyer… wyd… and the six month question from now is… will there be a bootleg throne on Aliexpress or Temu? It is here where the line between “real” and fake furniture gets tested. It’s a simple question… do you trust the dupe industry’s infrastructure to enough to include such a crucial fixture?

• The brother

  FOR SCALE
  is also at Salone and weighed in on the design there here, and here:

  LAMP WARS (for us); THE MEANING OF COLOR (is to chill)

  I agree at the bottom here about the sculptural qualities of old Sottsass lamps for Artemide. Look to the past! Or, better yet, look to past work from generational Italian futurists.

• I skipped Salone for Passover and the happy coincidence is that my hometown Ottawa Senators are playoff-bound for the first time in years and are playing at home a few times now. In this honor the Snake-Radek Bonk fanclub-friendship society will be holding a Passover meetup at the Scotiabank Place Tim Horton’s (201 section) during second intermission of Flyers-Senators on Sunday. If you’re there holler at me.

• Ferrari—will they shame themselves this weekend?

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Price results from this past week

Paying subscribers were alerted to deals like this first

Last week I found a lot of seating deals: the best ones to me were a Maralunga that ended for $2,700, an De Sede DS31 which sold for $850 (and a settee that a reader bought for $750), another rare De Sede lounger which wrapped up at $1,000, this modular sofa which found a buyer at $1,300, some Euro deals (Boeri strip sofa chair for just €350, Sabattini vase for the same price, early early Sottsass table for €1,500); a Jakobsson pendant for $90, Rohde for Miller (original) for $1,000 and this Sapper for Alessi kettle for just $50. Become

There is Snake and there’s everyone else.

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1st Dibs Ten Hut

As always a number of great buys period on Dibs this week… for those seeking immediate satisfaction. Stock is catholic, accessible, resplendent… I especially like the following items:

• Castelli SC 106 chairs, $120—among the most restrained stacking chairs, something between a 1987 school board meeting and the Time Life building that year. In Europe

• ‘80s Philips table lamp, $171 (pictured)—I love when the most outre design item comes from a multinational company that basically lodestones their country’s economy. As beautiful as a Ruud Gullit pass….

• Alexander Begge stool, $180—you know the drill, ABS plastic, stackable, convenient, bright red… timeless.. spanker

• Table lighter by Ronson, $190—Hudsucker Proxy perhaps or let us just say Murano glass…

• Thonet 13 chair, $202—in Ned.—a perfect, quiet chair. Look at this and feel peace… don’t even buy it…

• Onyx & marble bookends, $202, $26 ship—deeply gaudy, deeply architectural

• Schlagheck & Schultes Osram table lamp—Michael Graves-level evil! $200

• Cool Henry Rollins/tribal tat man plate, $191 (love…)

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Obs. 109

Two Breuer B33 chairs, PA—forty bucks: I’ve written on a couple instances that children’s furniture is more exciting and takes more risks than adult furniture, probably because of the fun geometry (legs can be shorter) and the… dispensation of having to ignore the idea that fun things can also be good. (So much of design buying involves “growing up” and being dour and thinking one has to be serious. In this sense, the work of Memphis and floating Italians before them was deeply necessary and remains so… and feels like an eternal corrective to the primness and half restraint baked into design. Anyways, here’s the kid’s chair—ended a couple days ago, it’s Breuer-esque, it’s not by Marcel—and it’s a bit country store compared to the B33s here, but it is lighter. The B33s are part of a quite perfect auction—variety, bedding, chairs, lighting, objets—the best items of to me are