Frank Lloyd Wright jail? and Obs 114
Many deals, much to do
Good evening. Snake is back: many pieces, many stories, much lore.
I just got back from San Francisco… went to Swan’s Oyster Depot, which some say is the best restaurant in America, and which has the good crushed ice, and Pepsi but not Coke… what is wild about seafood is they all get the same stuff and don’t cook anything, but some are good and some aren’t. Kind of like that scene in Pulp Fiction with the soap. Also went to the Marin County Civic Center, which my friend Adam recommended… it’s a massive structure that stretches across two valleys and which was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright—it was actually his final commission… the groundbreaking occurred after his death. It’s more outré than his other work:
And doesn’t really look human. There are lots of circles… the exterior of the building was used in shots in Gattaca, and the inside was too:
And the place was reportedly an for the Naboo planet in George Lucas’ first Star Wars prequel. I think there’s a futurism to all of Wright’s work (I went into it here)… and it weaves in to the Northern California paradise climate/greenery, I think. The location is an accurate, optimistic vision of the future… which should be taken with a grain of salt if it’s a government building, but man… if paradise happened over the next 1,000 years, it’d probably have weather and some architecture like this. It is jarring to see a building like this—wild compared to much of the brutalist architecture that cities were pushing up around that time, and also just geometrically arresting, to see such perfect shapes set against a parking lot and green grass. The details Wright chose for the inside—more circles, gold grilles, anodized metal—are different… a total work.
He was 90 when he was selected for the commission… there’s also this below ground:
Jail… shire-like. It’s all stagecoach tilters and cheese-stealers in there. Anyways, there’s a tour, it’s recommended. I’ve not seen a place like this, much less a government building, with this much attention to detail on the continent. The reined-in, detail-forward Gesamtkunstwerk here is closer to Corbu’s studio, Alto’s house and the like…
Last week’s price results:
Inno Finland pipeline chairs $200, Lilyriver Finland side chair $200, Rietveld chair $$325, four Spoleto chairs $300, Karelia sofa $1,600, Wenger desk $350
Similar auctions are linked every week through this newsletter. Forward this price list to a friend who you know is shopping for furniture. They can save lots of money and get very good stuff if they subscribe.
Obs 114:
Fedora lamp, Germany: Ends Sat… Part of a modern auction based in Dusseldorf that’s heavy on drawings, prints, pottery (look at how perfect this bowl is...) but which has a number of true era-specific items… an ancient Barcelona chair, this Christian Dell lamp, a Sigurd Resell Falcon chair (my Lord) and this… fedora lamp? Panama hat, really, so says consultant and stylist Brandon Mahler… it’s by Zicoli, the Italian lighting editor who have made, among other things, a perfect wall mount:
and a penny farthing lamp. One’s deadly serious, one’s a joke… this one reminds me of Artemide’s 1969 Boalum lamp:
and a few other Italian pop art, campy objet lamps from that era. It’s for the wall, actually, and when it’s there it’s like the hat’s hung on a peg. (One red one’s on Etsy.) you hang up the hat like on is beyond the pale…
Bertoia for Knoll diamond loungers, N.J.: Ends Fri… There are a flotilla of Bertoia chairs—side, diamond, bird, the barstool—the best one, to me, is the diamond… especially these older ones whose base is lower to the ground. (The angles are sharper… more dominant.) These ones are a good couple thousand bucks less than retail and have a nice patina on the upholstery… the term for this I’d say is ‘honest wear,’ which I first read on Paul Bright’s great IG page. Good seller to keep track of:
Paul’s store on Atlantic a decade ago was truly one of the all-timers. It’s one of two true modern pieces in the auction (these van der Rohe MR20 rattan chairs, model not listed, is the other one) which is otherwise heavy on true vintage/tramp art/Shaker-style parcheesi sets. True deal… below the jump: a $6,000 1stDibs sofa for $200, a $4,500 1D sofa for $1,000, and a couple dozen more pieces of design with writing, context, price guides, bidding instructions and what to pay.
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