Red Cokes as the standard unit of measurement. And (free!) Auction Observer 096
Free issue! No paywall: Sottsass, deco, Perriand, Wilkes Chiclet chairs, Euro auctions, Americano...
As always—essay at the top, some auctions below, the full complement of auctions that are gated to paying subscribers available to everyone this week.
Happy Monday sick ones, plenty of auctions ending this week, we’re in what my friend
calls, in his (great) fitness Substack “the fitness valley,” the few months of real time between Labor Day and the holidays when you have to work out and have a bunch of… quiet weeks in a row.
I’m finding the calendar shakes out the same way for auctions: in the weeks ahead (and this past week and before that) there have been chunks of accessible as well as canon/investment items being thrown up by about just every house. Some on the eastern seaboard, LA, some in Europe. Why is this? Well, everyone is in town, everyone’s working, everyone’s just one credenza away.
This week features:
Wilkes Miller (Nike Miller) Chiclet for nothing
An unknown/unheralded set of deco interiors from the old Fiat office space in Torino
Enough Sottsass to float a Volkswagen Rabbit
And more Pesce than that
Auctions for individuals in London, Edinburgh, New York City, Connecticut, Los Angeles, Florida, Chiago
Hermès pillows (for people who do not believe in spending money on furniture)
A meditation on red Coca Cola
But first,
Housekeeping:
Need the Yankees to lose
Great letter in
last week about the limits of… kid space in houses… playroom creep?I don’t have kids but I like this idea… very Bringing Up Bebé, that French book about reverse-helicopter parenting. Newsletter is worth reading in full. The idea behind it is—probs. fine to keep your kids’ toys covered up in a way and not like how they look, and to reach beyond Amazon for good-looking hampers. I mean, this stuff is out there, I agree. Maybe you place your baby on your Raymond Loewy credenza and see what happens? What did people do 50 years ago? Let’s say, 50 years ago in Milan? They must have done something. “Please check on baby Giacomo, he is in the Total Furnishing Unit.” Good comment section too. I am reminded that the tiny Eames elephant was designed as a child’s stool.
Best of luck to Perfectly Imperfect on moving past the platform here and onto their own thing. They are here now: www.pi.fyi. No ceilings… good website too, very tactile and handy.
Decent showing by Ferrari—four races left in the season—Leclerc theoretically in the mix for the championship—the constructor’s is anyone’s guess? All this to say, the Carroll Gardens Ferrari Appreciation Society is reconvening in earnest for the final push. Thinking Will Taylor’s apartment.
In reality
group workouts are coming to CARROLL GARDENS on Sundays. Morning? Afternoon? Poll”Subscribe and join the chat in there for details and lore. Calisthenics related…
On Cans of Coke in Auction Photos
Good auction that ended this past weekend, though nothing in the auction was any good. I didn’t include it in my Observer or in the chat to paid subscribers, the only thing worthwhile about the auction was the house’s abuse of Coke cans as scale, used in half of its item. Like these things:
Not sure what they are. Or who would buy them. And this:
And so on. Some of the auctions featured mini cans of Coke in their photos, which in a way defeats the purpose. But it’s all still very good. I posted a fuller selection:
The cans are a leitmotif that has come up for me from observing auctions. When I see a photo of a red can I save it… but aside from the obvious nature of how good it looks I don’t have much about this auctioneer practice to say… anything deep. What can a man say about Coca Cola?… It is good. It is the world’s only good poisonous drink.
This particular set of lots—New Jersey, estates, completed over the weekend—featured cans at about 40%. Not so much furniture being auctioned but smaller, more accessible items… other houses, at best, use a can now and then. Next to a sofa, in front of a bag, alongside stereo equipment… but this auction here went overboard. A partial reckoning of the display usage here includes a red can in the middle of Five Perrier Jouet champagne bottles, varying sizes… against a shell of a Giant Clam (it’s not that big), against a menorah and then against two other menorahs, in front of a whaling clipper ship model, boat from the mid-1800s, model four times taller than the mini-size can, wooden figurines, eight of them, of old Jewish people which at their high-most are the height of the can… a sculpture by Vilannis, another by Raffaeli, a Sierra Leonean sculpture, the head of a goat, cast from stone, Riihimaki glass, Murano glass polar bears (really good), a porcelain bust of Marie Antoinette (breathtaking), a bisque (unglazed porcelain) bust of Apollo (also good), a minor surrealist painting, a big painting that looks six feet high and depicts, if I remember it correctly, four big and tan apples… none of these auctions in any way are for things I would buy or display in my home… not even with someone else’s money… excepti for maybe the pagan Greek bust. It’s hard to find a good one. Only a few of the items—the paintings, the pitchers, whatever they are, in the top-most Substack photo—are very much bigger than a an of red Coke. One auction for glassware uses the can and the thing that’s for sale is not that muh taller. Why would someone buy something so puny?
I don’t want to make too much of this—the cans look good. I like how they look. This newsletter used to be way, way more pointless. I would have written a long thing about the cans and what they mean then. Which is cool. What I have noticed, though, as Snake has ramped up its utility, in the past couple of years, maybe because of where I’ve been looking, maybe because of other things, other auctioneers have retired their cans from auctions. I never see them anymore. My folder… about three photos in the last couple of years. But then with this can abuse and usage last week… I didn’t even mind they were mini. I gasped when I saw them… it’s very rewarding. It’s a nice private thing. The thing is, when you’re into something with an aesthetic, every iteration of item for sale can blend into itself… lamps and tables begin to look the same. But the cans here are identical. And what’s more, you can’t buy the soda… not these cans, at least. Get your own can… this one, you’re only supposed to look at it…
Which is not how Coke works. In the real world they sell Coca Cola for money. But in the auction space you can buy a crucified marble Jesus or a Prada bag (first and fifth slide) or a Boby Trolley:
(Second slide) or a Beethoven bust, but you can’t buy the Coke. No one can. It belongs to the auction. You have to get it yourself. Again, I don’t want to get too deep here. I just love it when they put cans in the picture. I’m glad they’re doing it again. If you see any photos of these, please send them to me. It’s the auctions that have cans in them that are the most permanent and important. Can we say that about anything else?
Obs 096
Euro:
Sottsass mirror for Santambrogio e De Berti, Milano: Tuesday… Early work from Ettore, about 1950, and so missing the big swoops and xx of his earlier mirrors. Sottsass… just about everything is worth buying if you have the money, but there is something special and reined in about this period. The mirror here plays with space and dimensions (the stretching-out top and bottom) like his later work would. There just are not any curves. Runs €8-10K; €4,000 good.
House also has a bigger one by Sotts, with the same wood framing around all four sides—from 1960, pretty conservative—for €8,000. And a table (simple, perfect, produced with Andrea Branzi—though late career, lae ‘70s) for 2K, as well as an early-era stool at that price that resembles, to me, the ski stuff by Charlotte Perriand.
A breathtaking… 1930s storage unit, by F.I.P. (who are they? hard to say), which appeared in Palazzo Gualino (old Fiat offices) in Turin and armchairs from that building too. Both appear to have been designed by the building architects, Gino Levi-Montalcini and Giuseppe Pagano. GP is best known for his metal chair… very 1920s Deutsch. Some archival pics of the Palazzo that appeared in Domus, via researchgate, can be gawked at here... they are so good. There is so much life in these types of photos… both of the above items are expensive to the point that you should not ask.
Frigerio table for Desio, designed by Luciano Frigerio—somehow born in the late 1920s—a very regal deco-reminiscent powerful piece with uneven drawer distribution—a tiny decision creates immortality… €1,500
A perfect 1970 Antonio Pavia rationalist… maybe? table for €2,000. Primary colors, space, wood, square lines… yet still exciting.
Gio Ponti, produced by Giordano Chiesa wall storage, Milano: Same auction, pointing this masterpiece out in its own entry for its similarity to (and superiority over) Poul Cadovius’ wall units from a decade on… these Pontis predate them. Check out this Phillips auction of a burl-y Ponti from ‘53… perfect execution, perfect design, perfect scope. Only €10,000 which I am sure is a fair price. Really one of the best Italian design auctions in a long while.
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Vignelli for Venini Fungo lamp (Murano), Edinburgh (where Shop Assistants were from): Beautiful and delicate Massimo Vignelli lamp from a nice and busy year in his career (1963, he produced this Pirelli ad then, and this similar in style to the above glass carafe). Everything by Vignelli, to me, shows the breadth of his skill and mastery… but then I am in the bag for the old man. What jumps out here is there tends to be an anonymity among so much Murano glass—the designers who don’t do it gaudy are competing to blend into the background—and so it is here… but not really. Now and then in Vignelli’s work (he had so many commissions…) is this reined in. Vignelli did a number of Murano pieces, but they weren’t always so great. This (a 4040) and the 4028 in a similar color to me are the best ones. Runs… hmm, south of 1 large; £140
House has so much stuff. A special auction worth skimming in full. Lots that jump out to me are a very simple Gerald Summers table (1935 design; £1,000, almost nothing there), an occasional table by him (2K quid) that is a little louder, and a chair (4) that takes the cake; a puke green Eames 115 group aluminum recliner (with ottoman, only £300), a differently delicate Tendo Moko table and these straight up breathtaking Sakakura & Choh chairs for Idee (2000; £500):
Really very good, rarely see shapes like this. Pretty new design as well.
As well… a Jack Adnet lamp (where does the light come from? Is there any? So good), a Carl Aubock mag rack (imposing), lots and lots and lots and lots of Gaetano Pesce, comprising a throne for only £750 and the best deal of which is this Sit Down sofa (1976 I believe) with Slavic trim, only £300, which will probably stay under 1 large. Batshit—we will look upon this era in a decade and scream.
Continental Auctions:
The real truth is better items are more often on sale on the other side of the Atlantic. But the realer truth is items that are just as good come on sale in America often enough. Just need a kitty and some gumption to pull the trigger.
Thonet 6581 chair, Chicago: Tuesday… A favorite of this newsletter and one of the more surprising Thonets… you can see how the dimensions here (this thing is from 1900…) influenced and showed up in continental designs even 70 years later, in particular the Pesce throne linked above. Also this umbrella chair that he did. No real price; $100
Auction has this winsome, bleak magazine stand (post Arts & Crafts, from the ‘80s?) for the same price; a Tobey Furniture ‘Morris’ chair (from 1902; newer upholstery, proto-Rietveldian design) for $700… what a rewarding piece. Someone should make these but with good upholstery (Tobey furniture DM me)… a French lounger (ils disent que c’est attribué a Dominique mais je ne penses pas) for 8, a Theo Alexander chrome/maple etagere from 2000 (simple and effective and just on trend enough), a Farngen tea service (canon), and Hermès pillows that are now only $250.
Sonneman for Koch & Lowy Ambassador floor lamp, Chicago: Same auction has this Koch & Lowy minimal floor lamp that is not far off from the Martinelli Luce (that didn’t sell) from last week’s paid-only late week letter….
This one is just as minimal. It is designed by Bob Sonneman, though the auction does not state this—it’s from about 1970 and I would say it is his sleekest design. I love Sonneman as an entryway into lighting, but sometimes his designs can look run of the mill. I don’t think this one does, it is accessible, sure, but it is so simple. Just $50.
Yrjo Kukkapuro pair leatherette stools for Haimi, Ct.: Wednesday… A minor work by Yrjo, these (no name, for Haimi, which produced many of his designs) have too much going on while staying too anon.: why are they tufted like that? They’re a little tall… the blue, I don’t know. Still, charming, haltingly ugly. And Yrjo doesn’t sell regularly in America, and almost never at this price. $100
A half-dozen hits among the refuse in this auction which includes this $250 trestle-leg dining table, these Herman Miller La Fonda chairs (pair) at the same price (push), two David Rowland for Thonet Sof-Teks (from 1979 and $100—these are the bizarro Spaghetti chairs. They are good.), mucho rugs, this Perriand LC6 table for nothing and this happy collection of ceramic pairs.
Quick Hits
De Sede nonstop sofa, Ct., $16,000 (In green, maxi size; part of an insane auction full of Nakashima, LV trunks, actual Jeanneret chairs, many in rightly the same price range)
Pulaski brutalist walnut high boy, Ct., $2,600 (This is actually what I go by when I play pick-up basketball; very cocaine-era Henry Hill)
Toshiyuki Kita Dodo recliner for Cassina, Fl, $100 Wed…(A canon Cassina in a good color for less than the price of three steaks is Snake’s Lock of the Week)
Giancarlo Piretti rolling chair, California, $90 (This lot keeps passing; I am not sure why)
Colombo Spider desk lamp for Oluce, white, London, £140 Friday...(On some days I believe this to be the best lamp in the history of design.)
Timo Sarpaneva bottles and stoppers for Venini in ‘91, London, £750 (not very utilitarian though perfect; pictured)
Archizoom Superonda sofa, black, London, £500 (a timeless and obvious classic)
Kazuhide Takahama Suzanne Sofa for Knoll, Md., $300 (in red which is the best color; retail hovers around $2,900)
Wilkes Miller Chiclet chair, Larchmont, $400 (helpful local auction and one of the better colorways)
Thanks for reading.
Snake
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