Collected thoughts on Copenhagen and Helsinki... and Observer 86

The best/rarest Herman Miller piece on auction, perfect kitchenware, seating, benches

Auctions at the bottom, many of them, and, tonight, a recap of Helsinki and Copenhagen, where I was on assignment for a piece of writing that’s in editing now, about modular furniture, and which mentions Vitra’s new Anagram sofa, which is modular and is out in earnest in September… and was unveiled at 3 Days of Design in Cope last week. My criticism and thoughts on the sofa are in the piece… it didn’t make Snake press time but follow me on IG if you want to read it, it’ll be up pretty soon. The tech behind the sofa is promising and I would welcome it being used in a wide swath of design pieces. It’s a hook system that allows you to play around with how the sofa is set up and is pretty simple, almost like a child’s toy.

• Went to Alvar Aalto’s house and studio, in the Munkkiniemi neighborhood in Helsinki. The house was a revelation… brought up questions in the way that these floor to ceiling all-time huts do. The first thing… the front has the minimal vertical thing going on, something that you see done in upscale tech neighborhoods (U District in Seattle maybe) where people buy old houses, tear down the lot and do a new construction.

  

  Sometimes you even see these houses in Carroll Gardens. I wondered where this aesthetic, which can predominate, had come from. It turns out they took it from Aalto’s own home—1936. Wild to think about… it follows the 180 that any aesthetic tends to have over a couple decades. (Look at long “maniac” beards—they were pretty scary in the 1990s. Only Dan Higgs from Lungfish had one. Then a decade ago they got popular with baseball relievers, and now they are, I don’t know, fully craft beer.) I will say that the front had energy and freshness in it… it wasn’t illicit, it just looked plainly good… despite being a 90-year-old decision that has since been run into the ground. It is hard to overstate the success of this decision.

  Inside Aalto’s hut it’s all right angles, and small details jump out: the whole house is sort of… sunken compared to the small little office (his arch. practice was run out of a side room for a couple dozen years, and it was taller than the rest of the living room because it was built above a sauna). The sauna thing is great. And the number of right angles in the house was nice and refreshing.

  

  

  

  

  

  Yakuza shades

  It was a perfect, pared-down grid: 1-2, 1-2. The materials were all very primary… simple. The wood looks like wood. It doesn’t get better than this stuff. The right angles also came out of the furniture, or its placement… but it feels more than that. Despite the massive amount of detail it feels very pared down, stripped, almost. Which makes for a nice tension.

  And set against this quiet, spare background were a wealth of brutally well-made accents. The doors in particular:

  

  

  Maybe new and refurbished. But you can… sense how heavy they are. It is so impressive. This sort of aesthetic… is just really so, so opposite to the way home construction is right now. Not that I know how homes are built… but so much of the smaller things in our houses and apartments are built like shit. But at Aalto’s hut, things are either simple or direct, or beautifully made. And what gets used the most—faucet, door handle—has refinement to it. When I go to a place like this I get despondent about how my place is—how most are. What’s jarring is… this isn’t a castle or a luxury house. It’s somewhat accessible. But it’s so counter to what’s out there everywhere. The high level aesthetic of the door handles here was addressed in this Q&A a while ago:

  SNAKE Q&A 006: Jaya Williams

  Williams here has a much more advanced and high level way of approaching things, in league with the old guy.

• The Aalto studio (office) down the block was less… earth-moving to me, but was very good too. I think it didn’t move me as much because it was an office, and I only like punishing brutal Yakuza-looking offices. This one was too beautiful. If you’re working for a company the office should be stark so you’re reminded what you’re doing with your life. But most of the rooms were fan shaped—that was nice. Another thing… lots of linoleum flooring. Perfectly cool and gym smooth. Linoleum, I learned, is a natural material. I guess it’s made out of a plant? Which is amazing. You would not think that it is. To me it is continental: places in Europe have these floors. They are cooling. They work better, I feel, than wood. It also felt good for my posture—better than hardwood. Was it? I don’t understand how these work, though, in Helsinki, where it is cold a lot of the year.

  

• We also went to the Artek factory and the guy at the first station, cutting giant pieces of birch into strips, with a machine, was wearing a Dropdead hat. Some other observations—I swam in the Baltic and whatever the main river in Copenhagen is; had a handful of fine meals (didn’t do reindeer or liver; harsh), and may have figured out what the ideal mitochondrial breakfast is, or at least pre-workout snack (sign up for my fitness newsletter, coming soon)—seem beyond the scope of this newsletter. That said:

• More… as usual, the food is better in Europe. The Coca Cola there is made with sugar, and tastes better. This makes up for small portion sizes (steaks the size of tomatoes). Somehow the tomatoes in Copenhagen are good. I didn’t have that much salty fish in Helsinki—but when I ordered a piece of toast from this coffee shop it came with a slice of deli meat, mayo and cheese. There are more 7s-11 in Copenhagen than there seem to be even in Los Angeles. They are everywhere; there was one at the airport. They are better than the 7s-11 in New York but not as good as in Japan. They had bananas, but they weren’t fresh—in Japan they’re so fresh you can eat off them. Only a couple of salty mineral waters behind glass, too. But a whole wall of Haribo candy (without the red dye and other crap in it). The preponderance of 7s-11 there makes me think there is a political agreement between the brand and the country, sort of like how when Bloomberg outlawed the fat people sodas in New York a decade ago, but allowed 7-11 (the one on Bowery and there weren’t that many others) to stock them. I think that was the same summer Four Loko was outlawed.

• Biking in Copenhagen was a revelation. Not sure how to relate it to this newsletter (I should brand myself more, people like that) except it was great. I enjoyed it. The rental bikes have a little mount for the phone, and so it’s convenient. Also the rental bikes are lighter and move better than the bank bikes in New York. And this one place Ismageriet in a mall near Emma’s gallery:

  Snake Q&A 019: Emma Kohlmann

  Had the best ice cream I’ve ever had. They also call scoops “Klugers” there.

• This place Vintsue 90 is the best bar I’ve been to in a few years. I went there and met Nino and Laine. Inside it is very perfect and… almost cavernous, as in an actual cave. It is cool and damp. You can smoke cigarettes inside, which is a great and important aesthetic—not sure if you can do this anywhere in North America legally still, except some New Orleans casinos. I like when places let people smoke indoors—aesthetically. I don’t do it myself—this is a hardline newsletter—but there is something about… the mortgaging of an outfit for a night out that sits well spiritually with me. It stinks and you have to air it out for two days. (As for health… I feel like ordering in is more dangerous than cigarettes… if you live in Europe and smoke cigarettes you are probably healthier than any American CrossFitter.) The smell also reminds me of my childhood, hanging out at my grandma’s apartment. Not a lot of light in the bar either, all very burgundy. I will say… despite all this, this bar, and indeed every bar in the Nordic countries I went to—seven of them—don’t serve Perrier or Coke, only alcohol… none of them. Bitch shit. I don’t like to complain so I’ll end it there. But maybe put some Cokes at the bar? Though at Vintsue 90 you can bring in your own N-A beverage. I got a raspberry juice and a salty water from the health hut next door, which also had sauerkraut juice that I didn’t feel like experimenting with, and where they spoke to me in their foreign language that isn’t English.

  • Maybe they don’t serve Coca Cola in bars in Copenhagen because it is American.

• Hung out with Jonah from

  Blackbird Spyplane
  at the Copenhagen equivalent of Bar Basso, called Palæ, and, earlier, at an Apartmento/Our Legacy sofa release thing. The sofa was good, here is a pic of Jonah on it:
  blackbirdspyplane

  

  A post shared by @blackbirdspyplane

  The event was cool. They had hot dogs (chili, regular, and cheese—as in the stuff is baked into the dog?)—and wine… they don’t have yellow mustard in Europe—they don’t believe in it. Some well-dressed people there, more than anywhere else that week. One guy had feathered hair and a wide-lapel suit with a flower tie that Del Campo wore and which Larry (Fits) has. Other people were wearing sweaters and 97s or long coats. I think the best outfit was a guy in shorts, the Balenciaga rainboots, a neck tattoo (and no other tattoos) and Pat Riley hair. If you’re going to live in Copenhagen you might as well do it feet first. The best-dressed people in the city, I think, were the city workers. Construction/train people. Because of how healthy groceries are there, the sunlight, their physical activity and movement, and the equator bagginess cut of the pant (KS said this on Fits; anything slimmer than a surplus army pant, properly sized, is skinny, anything bigger is baggy), they looked good. I don’t know Danish well enough to dig around where the city worker clothes were, though—also didn’t have enough time. Later that night the bar was more full than any place I’ve been to since college. The unasked question was—are these design professionals? Or people who rolled over when the bartender said no Coca Cola? We might never know.

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Obs. 86:

Componibili cabinet for Kartell, Queens: ends Tues… one wonders about the vibe shift and if it’s involved furniture: it is such a primitive market, culturally and broadly speaking, that I think we’re still all in the mix buying this stuff fairly simply. What I mean is… there is not really a correction or move away from 2020 era furniture and design items like there has been with, say… I don’t know… politics? Jeans? Does anyone who is good at jeans know if the vibe shift involves fashion? I think it involves tighter pants and is why we are wearing linen. This item itself is a bit over-present, though red ABS plastic from Kartell is fairly immortal as stylistic decisions go, and this one is O.G. with the monochrome bottom—reissues have a black bottom. These run about $300 now, but haven’t sold in a while; part of a healthy cross-section of auctions local in New York, incl.:

Auction curation—a never-before seen bench, some wild-ass Thonet pieces, very cheap plating, a demon side table or two, and the most underrated piece of Herman Miller furniture—and write-ups follow. Consider upgrading for a direct, broad and detailed guide to design you can buy now.