Observer 138: Why we went GREY; powdered-wig Snap-On furniture; an alternative to RAMS chairs
Swag swag swag
Hello, and Shabbat shalom. Lots of furniture this week and some news. Let’s get to it.
Housekeeping:
Snake (Super Health) merch will be available at a Minor Planet/Mikey Kratzer happening in Paris Jan 21-24. Here is the flier and the dates:
Feel free to follow my other account SNAKE SUPER HEALTH on Instagram here
Interesting lore from Realtor.com about the evolution of exterior and interior (paint) colors here over the past century. Stark evolution:
Stark indeed. A few things jump out. What about that pathetic little blue shade in the 2000s that’s just gone? The one bleating attempt to interject color into things 20 years ago. Brutal.
How to explain the shift? Well, one, houses turned outright grey in the 1980s, well before the “Millenial shift to grey” written about all over. Why then? Probably house prices. It’s not a design answer. But houses became true investment instruments—thanks to mortgages becoming negotiable instruments—then. Why does that matter? Well, before the 80s, very roughly, shithole suburban houses didn’t have the potential to go 20x value. And so once ANY house becomes worth 20x its multiple after a couple decades—why paint it yellow? Why dissuade a sale? Why be weird?
Fascinating NYT story this week about the Merz house in Brooklyn Heights (brutalist building; Willow Pl.) and the retired Wall St. guy trying to destroy the architecture and add a garden/cake to the top. I won’t spoil what happens and whether they destroyed the house or kept it together; rather the article offers a great, crystal clear explanation of how seemingly disparate styles can complement each other. Some quotes:
Mary and Joseph Merz had built the house and two others like it in the early 1960s, on Willow Place, an intimate street one block long distinguished by a row of Greek Revival houses from the 1830s on one end and Gothic Revivals built later on the other….
That’s the set-up: Brutalist house on a revival block. So why does it “work”?
The Merz houses, in a style often described as Brutalist, were praised in the design world from the outset, even among preservationists. It was their impression that new construction in the neighborhood ought to represent the best of contemporary architecture, rather than replicate 19th-century style and risk Disneyfication. …
Andrew Dolkart, a professor of historic preservation at Columbia, was among several experts who volunteered to speak at the hearing. “Each of those houses is very pure in its geometry,” he told me. “Putting something above them, well, why not just pop out a window?” Here, he was providing an example of the unthinkable.
What struck him, in particular, was that the Merzes built the three houses at a time when there were no rules to constrain them. They are “incredibly pioneering examples of contextual design before there was even a landmarks commission,” he said. The couple could have built higher, or done nearly anything. But they held back.
Emphasis mine. Just so great. It works because it works. It followed just as many rules as the revivalist houses, just different ones. My gut rx here is a “correct” brutalist house, i.e. a well-considered and created one, is a new form and new style of construction in theoretical opposition to older ones like the revival houses… but not lawless, and grounded in similar geometric rules more classic forms. So cool to see it laid bare.
Keeping on that topic, the Paul Rudolph Inst. for Modern Architecture was mentioned in the above story; here’s an excellent look at Rudolph’s work and his house on 58th St., published by Anthony Paletta on Curbed this week. Really strong read.
Retail HUT
This Paul Rudolph book (mentioned in Paletta’s story) is sick man. There are a skid of super underpriced books on Amazon atm. The one above, this one, tied to an exhibition (and 50% off), and this book, High Tech, which is not PR but a stone classic look at 80s pomo Italo architecture/object design that hasn’t been brought up in a couple years. Must haves all around.
Obs 138: Finally powdered wig Snap-on furniture
This Stoppino headboard (€400, Milan, Wed.) is only attributed to the designer by the house, which explains the low price, and doesn’t give it a strong archival… grounding. But it’s one of the wilder impressive pieces I’ve seen and is a key I’ve been looking for for a decade. It is this. This is maybe not a Stoppino, but is a Good Snap-On cabinet. The garage cabinet done right. Look at that piece and these:
So good. The through line between futuristic/avant Italian design and true, like, no-design well-made invisible and maybe hideous modern design… is here in this cabinet. (Some more examples of this marriage in the High Tech book). The auction itself is strong. Many high-level archival Euro pieces at cheap prices like above. These are permanent items: Magistretti, Sadler, more Offredi, Marcatre. I recommend Laura’s Magasin Euro issue to answer questions about shipping. So ends the free section of Snake 138. My picks for the above auction are below, as are these items (and more) from other auctions:
