OBS 141: Lighters, a Graves bed, forgotten Sottsass
And an LC3 that time forgot
Happy Tuesday, snow on the ground, snow in the air, life is good. Lots of furniture this week. As always: collectible and/or investment-worthy furniture and/or designer and/or not, always informed by taste, real life, some reaching. No affiliates below the paywall. Furniture, furniture, furniture.
Chairish Observer
Chairish is decent… not the one stop shop it was in the past but tremendous for diamond-in-the-rough items here and there. This (likely) Corbusier LC3 chair on Chairish for $2,400 is decidedly not that: it’s very prominent… canon piece. It’s only likely an LC3 since… the gold hardware is a bit off. Seller says it might not be. Beautiful geometry here; several more below the paywall, including one by Scarpa that is more tapered and chill.
Obs 141:
More smalls for the future. Smalls. Not physically big furniture that requires logistics or someone staying home from work... just small stuff. Easier that way to ascend when the thing’s the size of an eBay envelope. I think this is how design moves forward among regular people. Last week I said kitchen items. Today… lighters?
These lighters, bubbling up. Maybe they’re trendy—not sure? They’re quite beautiful. Zippos, from decades ago, are popular, but if you go further back it gets even more interesting. There’s Dunhill and Dupont. Dunhill, Swiss, makes the Unique and the Rollagas. The way to tell them apart is the latter has in-body lighting hardware; the unique looks a century old—indeed it’s from 1924 or ‘26. Dunhill’s a wild brand—car riding clothing, then lighters, then more lighters, then bags then, for a while, Kim Jones, now… who knows what. The auction (Thursday, Miami) has a couple of Uniques (this is the one), and more of the Rollagas, the in-body one, as well as a maybe later model in red, and a slim Rollaga—taller. Another auction, Akiba, has the same red one in better shape, a bullet-hole gold one. There are also Dupont lighters:
They have a nice ping. Good ones for each run in the $550 to $2,000 range, more; the Dupont in the Miami auction and each one above is well below that.
Big font—below—readers—will—find—100 selected design pieces, running the gamut: seating, lighting, storage, full sets, jewelry, earliest item from 1930 and most recent from 2017, singles and multiples, every item worth knowing about and entering your design lexicon.
Specifically?
