Late Ebening Snake Auction Observer 068: Regency, late Magistretti, the best console I've ever seen, the infinity of silverware, mysterious Kartell, dirt-cheap Eames in NYC...

Plus a couple perfect leather/chrome chairs, Esherick, a great Italian lounger near NY...

Snake is a reader-supported design intelligence newsletter. Today, an Auction Observer: longer thoughts on a couple of post-modern pieces of furniture, as well as If you dig this sort of writing, consider signing up for a sub, which includes essays, Q&As, designer profiles and more. But first,

Housekeeping:

• Can anyone recommend a silver repair service in the Los Angeles area? (East)

• Los Angeles Snake subscriber Ford Mustang appreciation society meetup? Thinking the Foster’s Freeze in Colton or Igor Stravinsky’s old mansion…

• Where is the best pho (with the crap in it) in LA?

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Auctions Observed

Hollywood Regency giltwood sofa, Ct., in-house shipping, ends Wed.: One protocol for this newsletter (arc; post-book) when I started was getting as wide a variety of furniture that was far away from grandma furniture down on paper… as in that was the guiding aesthetic impulse. Since that, in the dark ages, was what got me towards reading up about furniture and finding what’s good a decade ago or whenever it was that I started. But this piece shows the faults in that logic. It may be a bridge too far; it is Hollywood Regency that’s half comfort, half contrast, and which grandmothers (neither of mine, but many others) feel drawn to. A bit overdone, a bit extra, a bit easy… no real designer, the house says 1950. What jumps out to me about this piece is that its philosophy (loudness, comfort, gild) syncs up with others (crazy Italian crap) and the angles here also sync up with some of those items… like, say this. While we take for granted how many styles are outside grandma furniture, some of the grandma stuff is not bad. Should I have made this the headline and made a philosophical argument here about grandma furniture and why it is exciting and fresh? Or does that speak for itself. Still, things are much better now with the litany of modernist styles available now, since this thing should not be the craziest sofa you could get. Design reminds me in a way of the stuff in Hester Diamond’s house (maybe just this Louis XVI-looking settée near the bottom). More about the speciousness of these links down below; the usual Jasper acquired auction of many items from that era, and because of how they bought it, nothing super cheap. No real price on this; Regency should never go over $400; this one is $1,800

Magistretti for Fritze Hansen solo chairs, Vt., ends Fri.: Super twisted set of chairs from 1999 by Magistretti, a designer who is more represented in my apartment than any other (not counting, I don’t know, Christophe Szpajdel or Levi Strauss)… the Veranda, the Maralunga… a skid of others. These chairs bring to mind a little bit the Fontoni & Geraci ‘60s folders—the open space, the light wood, the chrome, and they have the same colors also to me as the Tomado shelves:

Perhaps the greatest shelf of all time. Are the chairs similar?In one sense, sure. Of course all chairs resemble each other… they all need to answer the same questions. But on a dumb-ass scale I think it is not so much a narrative revelation me saying that this Vico chair looks like another from a different place and time. It’s rather that the nice thing about design, I feel, for an amateur, is to make these comparisons and arrive at good stuff for yourself. If you’re wrong, you’ll get checked, and things will change. It’s just about being moved by individual items. Three of these sold for $300 in 2022, so did a pair. Before that, nothing. House is unloading lots of higher tier/anon mid-century modern, an old Nakamichi Soundspace (need a Nakamichi Dragon or I’ll die), glass duck sculptures, Tizio lamps, the TGI Friday’s pool table lampshade, jewels, the like, terracotta planters and this Klaus Schulze-looking glass bowl. Everything belonged to the widow of a doctor who worked in Connecticut. $150

Gorham Princess Patricia sterling silver flatware set, Il., IHS, ends Sun: One of the best things about design is how there really are not any secrets, only ignorant people. For all the talk here in this newsletter about how individuals don’t have any good furniture, and how no knowledge about design exists, and the subtext that the media does not competently write about design in a broad, holistic way… there exists, outside the world of words, a glut/wealth of different microstyles of every sort of design in the world, comprising pretty much every thing… and which exists on a big enough scale… one where items are/were made pretty expensively and sold to many consumers. There are massive, specific industries about them, and even in press things are very specific and distilled. It’s just not really in the air, yet, and the discrepancy, I think, between this wide-open, plain and very, very accessible market and how little it trickles down into much of the world has to do