Poptimism and furniture... an response

Auction Observer 118. As well as the penury of modern design

Thonet?

Last full day in FRANCE housekeeping:

• New Work: wrote about the subtle unspoken cabal/conspiracy of leg day actualy being on Tuesday? for GQ (thank you to my editor Alyssa) and explained how it happened here. Hint: it kind of actually is a real thing?

Music vs. design

The other day I read this Atlantic article from a bit ago about the pitiful state of of pop culture and then this response by David Marx. Marx’s response is meaty, the original is a bit depressing if only for its thoroughness. Both address the declining nature of cultural production from something novel and alive into something repetitive and rote.

The discussion is the kind of thing one might hear at the bar, or at a party… the most profitable films are IP, music is made my committee, everyone dresses in a similar retro way. One guy, Ted Gioia, says (convincingly) kids listen to their parents’ old records and not new ones; his newsletter on this platform exposes tries to amend this by exposing listeners to good new music (but not Kodak Black). Another musician is interviewed who retired from writing songs and now volunteers at a terrestrial radio station. The author Spencer Kornhaber talks to the critic Dean Kissick, who says (not paraphrasing, wouldn’t try to summarize here) art is suffering a crisis of execution and thought (among other things).

If the story covered design as well as non-Kodak Black music, it might mention that it is also pretty stagnant. People are in oldies mode here, too, buying mid modern or retro furniture instead of new designs, and ogling them, too. On the production end, it is hard to make furniture. Just like one can’t spend an afternoon at Tower Records anymore, one can’t go into a department store and buy a fascinating chair, not even with $8,000 and a gun placed at your head. The story, if it covered furniture, might say things are so bad that regular consumers have completely exited the market into a few different paths. Regular folks who may have been served by a department store in the past are left with Cabela’s or Wayfair. Other consumers with more defined interests in furniture (or with an eye and desire for pieces) who would have also been satisfied at a store, in the 1950s, like W. & J. Sloane, are just as much up the pike. To get something good they have to become an expert in vintage designs (e.g. through this newsletter’s below-the-paywall offerings), buy middling (or worse) pieces new at a businessman’s premium, or give up the ghost altogether and steer their purchasing interest and power into good kitchenware, decent lighting, the like. (Smaller pieces.)

If you have an interest in design then I would say this is all evident—it’s hard to find new, good, accessible pieces at scale. (It’s also hard to find good old stuff.) It’s probably worse than the arts because furniture takes up more space. (Also, the nice thing about music is albums are either free or $20.)

As for the article, it’s accurate enough, but there is a logical fallacy to the argument here—or, actually, to the more general observation that is comparing now to then. One thing with these arguments about “shit is wack now” is that the stuff being produced now—which people don’t like; which isn’t “good enough”—has the unfortunate quality of being compared to old items that are executed well enough to last… and be remembered. We mostly remember the good stuff. Think of the discussion a bit ago about mainstream ‘90s lust. Some of the veneration for that era—rounded up precisely in a Spyplane post here:

Certified snobs on a sinking ship

comes, for sure, from that decade being (maybe) the last era with true gatekeeping, high-level “taste,” curation. Some of the looking back comes from “creative” people getting handsomely paid for creative things and our… desire to be there again. And yeah, some is aesthetic—the work itself. But a good part of the looking back lust is out there because the ‘90s items we’re “remembering” now are the better ones of that era, regardless of taste or aesthetic: they’re the ones that were executed precisely enough that, for some reason, they live on and are remembered. No one’s sitting around thinking about Joe Vs. The Volcano or Details Magazine*. No one’s listening to Candlebox. We’re remembering, collectively, the stuff at the top of the chain—Oscar Winners, massive magazines that employed people, Tom Cruise, very well made clothing brands, and on and on.

*And, on the other side of the spectrum, sitting around thinking about Bulldoze/Ganksta Nip is edifying but blessedly doesn’t carry over into a “cultural conversation.” (Which is sweet)

I don’t share in these venerations really, but it’s not about taste. Really it’s clear that these outputs are the results of functioning, healthy industries: remuneration, brass rings, quality materials, enough work out there for lots of people to make careers. It’s why consumers’ appreciations have trickled down from the best of the best to the decade’s entire output. The capable professionalism and creativity that’s evident in even the most workmanlike ‘90s output is… staggering compared to today. Think of a movie like The Last Boy Scout (1991). It’s not Oscar bait, it’s not an intellectual film, it’s not Merchant Ivory. It’s directed by Tony Scott, but it’s just a flick. And it’s so well executed in comparison to the supposed to be good stuff now that it casts our whole present creative output into question.

This discussion can go on for a while—but it’s not my bag really and so I’ll leave it at that. What I’m most interested in here is how cultural conversations carry over into design… design for regular people. I’m not sure what the way out is—how we get good stuff into the hands of design consumers at scale. Especially today, especially in light of modern production techniques. Labor is expensive (rightly) as are materials, and there’s not enough margin (or cheap tech) for new furniture makers or young designers to make a living making something new at scale. I’m not sure if it’s a curation issue, or if it’s a problem that one firm can fix. It seems like to me it’s focused on materials. Furniture production (roughly) hasn’t advanced technologically, over the past 50, 60 years, compared to other creative industries. While a young person can record an album or shoot a movie on the cheap with fairly available personal tech—a phone, a computer—with no capital expenditure, only time, it doesn’t work that way for a credenza. It’s still metal and wood. These problems apply to a design student with a chair design or a company with a factory that makes other chairs. Production needs to be fixed somehow. After that we can worry about taste. Or maybe we forget about production and buy old stuff until the people who own factories start taking chances. Or move onto something else. Who knows. Lots of options.

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Retail corner

The following design items look good and offer immediate satisfaction without reliance on the time-based auction mechanism. All are from SSense this week:

• Niko June kantine drinking cups—nice, like 1970s Copenhagen coloring here with the glass color, shaped close to Iraqi teacups too, which is nice. Go figure, brand is from there… also in yellow

• Niko June serif-free steel cups—from the same company; logo on the side which is a nice Milanese touch

• Burberry hot water bottle cover with giant beige check—this is the one. Beyond gaudy

• Snow Peak director’s chair—not bad! Ultimate outdoor piece. Their designs have become more invisible lately.

  • Same one but sportier

• Jil Sander sleeping bag—who knew? I need someone to wear this to the movies so I can see them in line and buy them gift Red Vines from respect.

Above items may earn this writer an affiliate commission. Auctionable items contain no fees and are selected for more desultory and meretricious reasons.

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This week

Since it’s summer I’d rate the week as: a handful of good auctions that are heavily value inclined. Within those auctions I’d say there are about fifty or so items worthy of importing into a home.