Snake America is a newsletter covering vintage clothing (for GQ) and furniture (here) and strength sports (Inverse). Today, completed furniture auctions.
De Sede recliner, $50: Had no idea these existed… a De Sede recliner… high meets low… East meets West… I can’t think of another recliner that’s “designed.” It’s strange no one makes purposeful recliners. But it makes sense, in a way. It fits in with the thesis Tom Wolfe has in his furniture book. He wrote that people who like modern furniture enjoy being uncomfortable. That it’s an act of self-directed contrition. Restraint, penance. He’s partially right. Janet Malcolm passed yesterday, and I was going through her writing. She may be the best who ever did it. Her writing is like an iceberg with much more beneath. She’s also one of the most subjective writers there is. It’s a hard thing to do. She reviewed Wolfe’s book when it came out. Here’s a relevant passage:
I like the idea of van der Rohe taking a page from the Shakers. Malcolm was on the interior design beat at the New Yorker before she started covering shrinks. Her first New Yorker piece was a thing about Shakers. There’s more insight into American design history in her review of Wolfe’s book than there is in his book. Wolfe’s book is still very good.
But you’d think at least a couple recliners out there would be nice to look at. Or a couple nice sofas would recline. I bet some Italian ones do. I just haven’t seen them. This one… maybe it’s nice. It looks like a dentist’s chair. Or something from Star Trek. (Not the original Star Trek: I found a Burke tulip chair a few blocks from my apartment. I’d maybe rather have this De Sede, but it’s tougher to carry.)
This one I think, though, is not bad. Because there are so few other nice-looking recliners. Another pair of fairly identical De Sedes (different model number) sold the same week as this one for $500. To my knowledge no one has ever written about a De Sede recliner on the Internet. But it’s new in this newsletter. It’s not exactly a discovery. In fact, it’s not a discovery. Revealing a widely-made product whose ads were in magazines across the whole continent of Europe in an Internet newsletter is like being the first person born during a certain Chinese Zodiac year to listen to Pentagram or who collects old Corvettes. It doesn’t mean anything. It’s barely worth distinguishing. But sometimes what’s old is new. Especially vintage, or writing about it. My opinion is if you’re the first one in your Zodiac year to find out about something, you’re about 11 years late. Now that I think about it, my Magistretti sofa, you can pull out the legs. And the head. But the head’s screwed on tight, so you can’t do it that often.
Henry Ford yachting china, $1,100: The magic space in auctions and flea markets is the area in which the poor and rich interact. And where the rich supplicate. This doesn’t exist in many other places in society. Mostly our markets are built to remove this. If you have money, you get what you want, and if you have a lot of it, you can get it faster or first. In some ways, it’s not a bad system. But a good flea market, or auction—a resale economy—is fed by people who don’t have much money, selling things that have worth, but, since they sometimes don’t want money, they would rather keep their things. Which can drive up the price. These are not traditional sellers. This auction is from Henry Ford II’s widow. But speaking generally, people who find their way into used yacht china often don’t want to sell what they have. This is one more reason why used things are more alluring. Not necessarily superior. There’s just more to pay attention to. Usually, if you have money, things are frictionless. But sometimes a seller will hold onto a set of yacht china out of spite. The good kind of rich people know this, and kiss the feet of the hill people who have found their way into this China. It’s a nice phenomenon less because the rich person is a supplicant here, but because there is parity.
Most other markets, including luxury, until recently, for most people, functioned like diamonds. Only new things were for sale. Who wants to buy used China from the back of a pickup? Not many people. People who don’t care about social niceties, who either don’t have to, or are self-assured enough not to worry about what stepping out of line might do to their standing. Some rich people fall in the Venn diagram here. Artists too, and people who don’t have any money. That’s why at a good flea market you see rich people and broke people, the bridge between them being the same rare, weird thing that has a floating value that in some ways doesn’t really exist.
I can see either having the China. Ford II, his boat’s name was Southern Breeze. He was in charge of Ford during the period David Halberstam covered the company in The Reckoning. It’s Halberstam’s best book, and one of the best books written about America in the past 40 years. It’s all in there. It explains the country by explaining Detroit. You have to look at Detroit to explain America. That’s the only way to explain it. It’s all in the book. It’s never in any used bookstores, because who would get rid of it?
Halberstam doesn’t paint a great picture of Ford, though his second wife (Cristina Ford) seemed pretty cool. She was Italian, and liked traveling. His brother William ran the Lions. It’s cool to be rich enough that your yacht has its own China. This auction is Kathleen DuRoss’ (II’s third wife) lot, and netted $5 million. In the Ford vs. Ferrari movie, the guy playing Lee Iacocca’s suits were too tight. Michael Mann’s version is in the works now and will hopefully remedy that problem. The movie is said to be about Enzo, so Iacocca might not even appear. As I rode on the Staten Island ferry the other day I got to thinking that 50% of movies should take place on the sea, like Miami Vice. The other half can be about people wearing suits, standing around and talking. The suits should not be too tight.
Thanks for reading. Happy birthday Lucas.
Snake
Past work: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-JLRt0Ec6gZBm50hATYCYmLctnF9GhVijoEbam50JSw/edit