Obs 134: Nordic design ranked and explained

Happy early Thanksgiving

Hello, start of the week, Thanksgiving in America.

First up:

• For High Snobiety’s September print issue I wrote about the Noguchi lamp and the museum— and the piece is finally online. In it, I chat with

  Blackbird Spyplane
  ,
  Kyle Chayka
  , Chris at Ven Space and Kimberly Sørensen of Phillips Auction house about the artist’s work and legacy… read it here.

• I keep reading stuff by grown adults about what’s cool and what isn’t. There should be a moratorium on this word. Or maybe an acknowledgement that different people have different definitions of what this thing means. I myself think that people are confusing the trappings of wealth and comfort with an aesthetic: calling expensive or comfortable things, or successful people from the past cool. This makes sense in a penurious age—but then again it is an unbecoming subject.

---

Retail observer

I like this stainless steel menorah—shaped like a banana. Almost great, very Italo whimsy… near pop art and not complicated. The same banana (made by Maisonette) is also available in travel size and in yellow, which isn’t as good. There are so few menorahs of modern or simple design. There is really just the above one and Aidan Elias’ brilliant one for Lichen, which I’ve written about before here. Who needs the adornment and embellishment? More than this, though, stainless steel is good. It goes with everything. Like Lawrence said to Bentley… its clean.

---

Obs 134: Fun Nordic…

There’s a very strong Nordic design auction ending Tuesday from Wright auction house, in LA. To me it’s the best stateside auction of the week—lots of quality items, several deals, several museum-quality pieces as well. Going through the lots it’s also a reorienting auction—one that shows the funner and lighter edges of Nordic designs, which we can define as Danish, Swedish, Finnish… Because the auction is from Wright, it’s full of strong, well-selected pieces—that helps—and this selection gives a truer impression of the full range of Nordic aesthetics here than the more front-facing Danish or Swedish replica designs we’re inundated with outside the direct design world. Items are held back here, for sure, but many are colorful, curvy, clean… few feel somber. A number of pieces jump out, incl.:

Keep reading for these items and 100 other curated pieces of design: chairs, sofas, settees, chairs, lamps, credenzas, bar stools, dinnerware, storage, designed in France, Italy, Germany, Bavaria, America, Milan, America (Michigan), every good era—70s, 60s, 1880s, late 1970s—with auctions very close to New York and LA. No affiliates—good stuff only.