OBS 140: Squiggly cutlery and a sick week for wood and lamps
Happy Rosh Chodesh Adar, Ramadan Mubarak, happy Year of the Fire Horse, good Ash Wednesday to all, new moon as well. Rebirth. Fire. Lots of furniture.
Couple housekeeping items:
Shirts—new Snake shirts:
They can be bought here.
A big post about superfoods can be found on my health newsletter SNAKE SUPER HEALTH. Subscribe if you’d like.
Some more news:
Decent piece in AD about this football player’s house. Bills player. I like the door a lot and the barstools—old Knoll—and the way light comes into the place—truly perfect light. Lots of mid-mod places in Western New York like that. The door to me reminds me of a Cini Boeri; it isn’t mentioned or highlighted in the piece. The rest of the furniture is, frankly, a great selection of newer and accessible pieces—Hay and so on. Good shit.
Is IKEA’s best furniture for kids? Probably—has been. In the 1980s their most outré design items (the most Memphis-y stuff) were their children’s seating. Maybe easier to make risky design decisions in the dark.
Piece in Curbed about ahstrays. Smalls are the future. Smalls are the future of design. The future of design is smalls.
Smalls are the future. Exhibit 2: In Corso, a design archivist/dealer in Toronto, just got in this great Benzer cutlery set in their shop:
Benzer from Germany. Similar to Sasaki but better priced; hard to find into on them, or on either. In Corso is great; I chatted with Coco, Inco’s founder, for an earlier Dwell column and she gets good shit in constantly. Consider following them on IG and subscribing to their Substack.
How to ascend your small knowledge? My answer for the past five years was the IG account Knife Fork Spoon, an archival flatware account—probably the only account I gatekept. Looking now, though, like 100 people I know follow them. Anyways, they are putting out a book:
About history of cutlery, things like that. Tremendous archive here. Again, smalls. Smalls are the future. Mogging your kitchen is easier than furniture. Furniture is for psychos; few are called to the life below the paywall. Fine by me. Elite flatware, though, is theoretically for everybody.
Obs 140:
Whole mess of Frank
Every once in a while we get a strong auction with grapes that’s not shy to just stock it with Frank Lloyd Wright top to bottom. And similar designers/eras (like Stickley). These auctions… are excellent for good for individuals whose tastes go to WOOD and want to stay in that lane. Thing is there’s a whole universe. This auction is the best I’ve seen in several months. South Bend, Indiana, Thursday.
The highlight to me are these Wright chairs, pictured above, Cassina 1980s. A deal; similar to the Rennie Mackintosh chairs from Teddy Roosevelt dayz which Cassina also reissued. Sort of medical furniture—don’t ask why. Auction has many other great pieces, in particular this Arts & Crafts Allen extendable table (dining table) that you never see at this size or price. There are adjacent pieces to this exact Wright chair, but flipped: this Stickley set of chairs with 1980s cushions, same color and scheming on Venturi Chips/Sottsass East Side work from the 1980s. Also this bronze Tiffany Studios plate that has to be severely healthy to eat off. And is an even crazier extension of the smalls/kitchen aesthetics discussed above. More picks below, as well as a whole glut of good furniture. Every week, only below the Snake America paywall.
