Semi-emergency Snake Auction Observer 049
Many auctions ending early Tuesday: Cardin, late-era Paulin, Memphis, Thonet, Kartell
Snake is a weekly newsletter covering good furniture, undervalued, or eternal.
This week there is a bumper crop of auctions, with many great items ending Tuesday before 3 PM ET. I suggest registering for these auctions TONIGHT. But I’m only suggesting it—unlike last month’s emergency newsletter:
the prices aren’t steals, and the items occasionally get sold in America, so it’s not exactly an emergency. Just a semi-emergency. But what sort of service newsletter would this be if I didn’t stress the point? Auctions this week are heavy on French, Italian, Memphis. As always, immediate auctions at the top, and Quick Hits at the bottom… but first:
Housekeeping:
In LA for LA Art Book Fair with Shining Life
Cool video of Carcass opening up with Dead Can Dance:
And then going into Genital Grinder. Prob sickest crap I’ve ever seen.
Anyone picking up their order from D***h M************* with room in their Ferrari for my order? I got an engagement that day but if I don’t get my illegal dairy I will die. Will hook you up
Auctions:
Six Cardin dining room chairs, South Bend, in-house shipping: Another era-agnostic masterpiece from Pierre Cardin, moonlighting in genius as ever… these chairs, a set, are listed as 1970s, which is vague but likely correct—another chair by Cardin dated to 1980 looks similar but is more severely designed; more mature… Seller says these were made in Italy… is this even Cardin? There’s no tag or label in the auction, and indeed so much Cardin furniture is out there and was licensed it is hard to tell. Going back to my last newsletter about sniffing out fakes:
I just am not sure that someone will fake a set of leopard-print Cardin chairs… The key takeaway here is searching for permutations of this chair’s title and photos brings up this exact set, on a few different sites (Etsy, Dibs, etc), all selling out of South Bend, all for around $6,900—so if these were fakes, well, this auction is a deal if the price doesn’t jump. This is also the first time this item has been listed period. House has some hits: mid-century wood, this wild Roger Rougier chair, Baughman, some good dining/conference tables. If it was me, I’d wait to pick up the chairs until after Sept. 23, when Notre Dame (13) faces the Buckeyes (ranked third) at home. I don’t see them winning, but much is on their side. Louche; $1,000
Paulin for Baker deco table, South Bend, IHS: I wrote about this one before:
But want to highlight it again on the re-list for the new readers: Paulin did these tables towards the end of his career; they have a nice interplay between gaudiness and rigidity (which is very tough to do). What I love about his late work is when you’re very old you start to become loud again. If you’re an artist, anyways. Did Edward Said know about Pierre Paulin? Hard to say. Last winter this table went for $3,200; if it goes anywhere below 2 this summer it will be a deal. $1,000
Sergio Asti for Heller ice bucket, Fl.: One more Italian act of genius highlighted by your humble reader-supported newsletter, this ice bucket was produced by Heller in the 1970s, not unlike the plastic plates (Vignelli) that look like this. Knowing what we know now about plastics (microplastics are bad baby) Asti’s design is not the most healthful solution, but… frankly… the reason to drink raw milk, filter one’s tap water, maximize sun exposure and organ meat consumption and chug methelyne blue is so that I one does not have to throw out one’s ABS plastic/melamine Heller kitchenware away. Why do you think I do it? Because I like to? This bucket sticks out from an auction heavy on timepieces, silver, Baccarat glass (not bad; maybe a new thing for me down the line) and a Gervasoni tray table that I keep returning to (it’s the very light-colored wood; unnatural looking like a cancerous cell cluster). Listed at $25, with fees that would be about fair; price history for more exciting Asti for Heller ice buckets (primary colors) are in the neighborhood, too, though, and there also sit a handful on eBay right now. But even if it were at a premium, it’d be worth it. Just one of the great perfectly designed old items being sold at a glut; great gift as well.
Lorin Marsh dining/conference table, Ct., IHS: Some honesty in the title, finally, nice to see an auctioneer (rest of the lot is a bit staid) come to the knowledge that conference tables belong in the dining room and vice versa… one wonders if the swoon in New York commercial real estate is what’s causing this flexibility. Lorin Marsh, a good name for an English professor and a bad name for a personal trainer, is from New York, founded in 1975, Upper East Side, a staple with a long back catalog, some items flirting with Deco, some just deeply simple (pretty perfect…), some simple and deeply expensive, like this stainless steel cabinet. This table’s reportedly from the 2000s; I quite enjoy this era of severely muted, very expensive post-post-post-post-1980s furniture created around the turn of the millenium. The best of it showed up mostly in trade magazines and in the homes and small businesses of the mega-bourgeois class… of which there are few… which is why it always looks somewhat off and exciting.
Few brand names; despite the intended WASPy dullness (this table is all manners and is restraining itself), the details here squeak out: the brass hitch on the leg, the zebra wood... It’s all very simple, styleless, imposing and dark. Back to late style: One apex in a director’s career (film) I think is not having any style whatsoever—look at the last few Scorsese pictures. But with furniture, though, there are other paths. Loud is still good, still... really beautiful; $10,000
Sowden Oppenheimer clock, NJ: Strange shipping situation with this auction, items, according to the house, go out from either Il., Ca., or N.J. … not really worth thinking about. This thing was designed in 1983 by George Sowden, a Memphis founder (moved to Milan in ‘71 to work with Ettore S at Olivetti) who had one of the more batshit back catalogs among the group (Mamounia chair; his stuff I felt showed how far Du Pasquier’s work could go (her upholstery)) and is representative of an auction heavy on modern and Memphis type items. The whole lot is worth looking through—it ends TUESDAY—the items that stand out the most to me are:
Ghianda and Zanini prototype chair, $750 — rare prototype; Ghianda is special, a rare Italian wood guy and Zanini is a giant.
Martine Bedin super lamp, $500 — one of the best lamps ever made, full stop, the most direct “fun” design piece of the past 45 years.
Pesce table lamp (Atlanta Hawks colors), $1,000 — just another ass-beater from GP, mega-deal if under $1,800.
Italian console table, $500 — nice no-name design here, burl wood or looks like it; very loud. Items such as these present themselves either to psychos or to readers of weekly service newsletters about furniture. Know what I mean?
Tobias Wong glass chair, $1,200 — badass, straightforward, downhill from Cini Boeri, shaped like Judd’s 84. Better than DJ, not as good as CB.
Mangiarotti Spirali ceiling fixture, $1,000 — doesn’t get better than this.
Magistretti Faun chairs, $500 (pair) — not early work by VM, even though it’s wood, but a late-career radical work. Really good
This particular clock… will I see Oppenheimer? Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe he’s not a good director. This is the thing—Chris Nolan is the director for our age, an insipid technician who has eclipsed Spielberg’s like, bourgeois technicality (Faustian camerawork in the service of less than nothing) by going a step further and making movies that are very visually inventive (though not alarmingly so) and quite doctrinaire/conservative in plot and politics (which is fine) and which are seemingly smart… seemingly deep, seemingly intellectual… and very much not that. His movies are definitely not smart movies. What’s the smart movie he made? The one about the magician? Maybe the one about dreams. Or how the plane goes faster than the boat. Or about the super hero? Oh wait, no. What about the one about how space is crazy? Yes, definitely. And of course, his early career masterpiece, about the guy who can’t remember what time it is.
Of course, movies don’t have to be smart to be good; his films I would say are intelligence-neutral, and aren’t sold as like, smart films… they are powdered win popcorn movies, and indeed this all might be a notch in the pro column… the simplicity of their like ideas (his movies are never about emotion; only ideas… which I suppose makes him more of an immediate heir to De Palma and not double S) are at least quite vivid. It’s more that… so many other directors are just straight up incompetent. Maybe it’s the market, maybe it’s studios. But that’s how it shakes out. One wonders what the idea will be for Oppenheimer—war is great? War is bad? Who knows. At least we can assume it won’t be about a professor’s emotions. I’ll see it. Only thing is I read that the film’s basis is Richard Rhodes’ The Making of the Atomic Bomb (amazing book), which has no chase scenes; those are what Nolan does best. He’s so good at them everything else is just window dressing. This clock sold once, for $4,200. $1,000
Thonet Fledermaus set, Chicago: Rare set of table and chairs designed by Josef Hoffmann; this liberal reproduction was made in 1990. The original design is 1907 (there’s debate; some Hoffman Fleders are said to be from a couple years before that) and has a decidedly different aesthetic and material setup… bentwood, cane, earth colors, the whole megillah. Original Fleders were made by Kohn, a rival bentwood company to Thonet… This retro looks like something out of the diner scene in Mishima (1985); in fact given the production date I’d wager the sets in the movie inspired this aesthetic—or whatever early 1980s upscale hypermodern furniture that Eiko Ishioka, its production designer, was going for in the film. These have a sort of downmarket Venturi for Knoll aesthetic, to me… I thought the set might have been named after Johann Strauss’ opera, but the subject is actually an old theater in Vienna. The glory remains, though; this listing, at $250, is Snake’s Lock of the Week.
Quick Hits:
FLW-style sofa table by Marden (walnut), In., $300 (Nelson bench but faster)
Loewy lacquered dresser, In., $300 (from the master’s semi-ugly early period)
Agnoli for Grassi Korium chairs, pair, $200, Tel Aviv (!), IHS (still a deal)
Three Stoppino for Kartell stacking tables, $80, Md. (potential steal here)
Ero S swivel chair, Starck for Kartell, $100, Ga. (rare non-ass item by Starck)
FLW Taliesen bench/table for Henrendon, $2,400 NYC baby (he does it again)
Thanks for reading.
Snake
Heads up anyone who bid on something in the GA auction that had the Ero S swivel chair ( from here: https://substack.com/redirect/e6b8ec7f-adb6-4db7-8fe8-62cb73c491fb?j=eyJ1Ijoid2R0MiJ9.ViD2PZRTG9PrcTe7bVNJfy3l_Ftgdt8e3fi1d2c1eLo) there's a funky bogus junk fee (not the buyer's premium or tax obvs!) showing up on invoices that wasn't disclosed in the auction terms. Contest tf out of that fee y'all. Happy hunting!