Snake America is back: it is a newsletter covering vintage clothing (for GQ) and furniture (here) and strength sports (Inverse—check out my latest story about short and tall lifters). Today, completed furniture auctions. First, a couple things I want to highlight.
I want to recommend the third volume of Jason Bil’s Record Aficionado book, released this week.
Here’s what I said about Vols. 1 & 2 an interview:
I think the Record Aficionado books by Jay Bil are some of the best journalism on the subject (USHC), too. He leafed through every single zine in the ABC No Rio library and found ads and reviews on these records no one has seen in 30-plus years. I’m biased, since we’re good friends, but I think they are the best and most complete works of documentation on the subject.
Vol. 3 continues this trend: it’s a thoroughly researched, perfectly laid out document of hard-core records from ‘85 to 1990. The first two books are required reference materials for people with an interest in the genre of hard-core music, or who like record design, or who like design, or who like New York... so too this. Buy here:
https://tumbledleather.bigcartel.com/
As well, I’d like to highlight this Palestine Benefit shirt with all profits going to Palestinian Children's Relief Fund and Islamic Relief USA. Available here:
https://palestinetheshirt.bigcartel.com/product/palestine-shirt
For the rest of the day (it’s a preorder thing). Not really going to soapbox here but I urge anyone who might be surprised by my link here to read Peter Beinart’s writing on the region with an open mind and see what’s good. Edward Said said as much 20 years ago. Anyone who’s not surprised here, check it out too…
Anyways, onto the letter…
Memphis ties, ended $140: I wrote a piece last week for GQ about the Memphis Milano capsule collection reissued by Saint Laurent. The collection’s timing was a little bit specious in that Memphis’ resurgence is (charitably) five years in and in that time Ettore Sottsass’ (the founder) work, both his own and for Memphis, has gone from difficult/avant to palatable, pleasant, fun, simple, obvious… Or has it? It hasn’t—it’s the same work that stuck out in the 70s and 80s and then a decade ago. It stuck out even when it was very popular. Everything looks different at first… maybe difficult isn’t the word… fun things can be difficult… it’s just that we’ve changed. The world has seen a lot more Memphis…
I’ve mentioned this before here: there’s a difference between furniture criticism and being over of a furniture style for whatever reason… the latter is a natural outgrowth to a design medium that frankly has been completely specialized until a couple years ago and now isn’t. In two short years couches, mirrors, previously avant and difficult/fun/overripe design pieces (like Memphis) have gone from shocking to cloying to annoying. It seems partly about the photos. Maybe this stuff looks less fresh because of the pomp and circumstance about this furniture (i.e. social media posts, the repeated flatness of those images, the indistinctness, possible personal feelings for whatever person or media company posting them… stories about them). I’ll table this line of discussion since my lone newsletter style rule is never write about anything that’s in the news this week.
So I’m less interested in the (quite fine) story on Pinup Magazine the other week about this topic than Soriana sofas having gone from $1500 to five times that over the course of the past three years… they were ugly and no one wanted them… a Carlton bookshelf sold for $7000 in the 2000s… it feels like the past decade upends the mid-modern order… but only if we think there was an order… it was really more of a temporary state of being. I think the analogy here is the music my friend Jay researched, before and after democratic file-sharing… before file-sharing, entryway records were the accessible ones, kept in print, mostly bigger American groups like Negative Approach, Minor Threat, what have you. Plenty of great records did not stay in print (many are found in Jay’s books). The records at the front were considered the best ones… it felt, for a decade, like a lot of other stuff was forgotten. It wasn’t. Once music became more available, or visible, the old Southern Distribution pecking order became a quaint memory, a descriptor of the ‘90s. It felt like the way, but it was only a decade or two. The true reality is that there is a glut of really good stuff out there.
So too with furniture. It feels like the swoon in Memphis pricing was an aberration. Who knows why it fell out of fashion. I’m sure it will again. But the next time, it won’t be totally gone. This is good stuff, it works, it shouldn’t be a secret. But I don’t know. It’s hard to overstate how cheap things used to be. Even Eames recliners went for dirt 30 years ago. Now things are different. There are more ways to see good pieces now, and there are fewer secrets. But honestly, there are still plenty of secrets, plenty of deals. So many in fact. The Memphis Milano ties here were only around for a few years (like MM itself) and rival just about every tie made since the ‘60s besides Yohji Yamamoto’s mafia/flower era, which followed these items, I think. Those Yohji ties are better but these are just a step down. Recommended.
Baughman bench, sold $850: I love this bench. Or I did. I’ve been tracking its pricing for almost a decade since I discovered it right after I bought my Nelson (-attributed/-era bench, since there’s no foil sticker on the bottom and I could never in good conscience pass it off like a real one), and liked it more than the one I just bought. I vacillated between inaction and activity, forgetting about it and needing one.
Auction prices pretty much stayed steady over the last half decade, benches reliably selling on auction under $1,000, with one that went for double this auction in October of last year, which was either an outlier or bellwether. It’s too early to tell. When I saw that high price I figured I was tripping. I didn’t like this bench very much. In a sense it looked different to me than it did in 2014… it’s not as difficult or cold as it seemed at first. Some of this evolution came from the money, some from seeing the same auction, and doing nothing, for half a decade. None of which is much different than a Fragola mirror becoming overexposed.
It brings up less the theoretical nature of furniture taste than its logistics, and how that plays into taste. It’s harder to buy and replace a bench than, say, jeans. Baughman is from Kansas (and a Libra), so his work was available in America. But his furniture is not light enough to throw in a bag. I guess outside New York everyone has a car… but still. Furniture is big. You buy a replacement bench, and have to sell the other one first or figure out how to get rid of the extra. So evolution either doesn’t happen, or is slower, or is hard. Look, it happens, but images get involved here. You have to look at photos (or display models) before you buy. I like the Nelson well enough to not be spurred into action. A clothing upgrade is frictionless, but a bench, it’s none or it’s two. Where am I going to put a second one? Up my ass?
Thanks for reading.
Snake
Other work: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-JLRt0Ec6gZBm50hATYCYmLctnF9GhVijoEbam50JSw/edit