Snake America Thirty Seven
Snake is a bi-weekly email newsletter covering for-sale items. This week: a Rothlisberger table and a Stussy eight ball Baja pullover. Subscribe.
1stDibs: Rothlisberger table, Tic Tac the seller: Nice effort by Rothlisberger getting this table out there on 1stDibs after getting eliminated in the football playoffs. This looks like a Memphis piece. Memphis is a group of furniture makers who made super-ugly (at first glance) furniture than looked a lot better (eventually). That furniture is a bit more popular now--though it wasn't exactly ever underground. Still, until (probably) Jim Walrod's Apartmento cover story, or an LA exhibit in 2006, the most prominent showcase of Memphis furniture was on Pee-Wee's Playhouse (USA 1986). Ettore Sottsass was Memphis' best-known designer and his obituary made The New York Times. He started, his first thing, doing a red typewriter. Just a regular typewriter that wasn't black or grey. Then he went on to house dividers and giant telephones, a lamp that looks like the drinking bird but doesn't get very bright, etc. I wonder if he thought Rothlisberger was cool or a herbert when all the Memphis designers hung out together. Further digging reveals most spelling for the company to be Roethlisberger.
The label on the table has no e, but Rothlisberger doesn't show up anywhere except on 1stDibs (this table and another.) Confusing things further, Ben, the quarterback, comes from Swiss origin. In 2006 he visited Switzerland as a spokesperson for The Swiss Center, a foundation that spurs Swiss-American interest in Switzerland and the profitable heritage tours that come from that(1). Did this 1stDibs seller--from Geneva--spell the table name wrong? We established a no. Did 1stDibs take a stand against Roethlisberger the quarterback with strong in-house style, up to and including a new label? Less likely. What's up with this book--is it by or about the quarterback? Are there two Roethlisbergers who design? Is Ellis Island somehow involved? Do I need to learn German to find out the truth?
Anyways, good table. Super disorienting. It looks like it might not entirely touch the ground or that it touches it perfectly. I think Memphis stuff gets better and better to look at, even--especially?--for works by minor designers. I'm not sure if Rothlisberger--Americanized spelling--is involved. But the legs are great too. There's a resemblance to Mad Magazine's Poiuyt. And there is no finer image in all of American design or letters.
eBay: Stussy Baja sweatshirt with dubious tagging: For lack of a respectable eight ball T-shirt on eBay there's this eight-ball Baja. My friend Nathan came across a Gorilla Biscuits photo from late in the band's existence--pizza shirt, Gulf War-era--wherein "Lukie" Luke Abbey, the young drummer, is wearing a white pocket-print original logo shirt. Well, it looks like the logo, and has a dinosaur on it. (Members also wear, from left: what appears to be a HARVEY MUDD hooded sweatshirt and a script-logo Cardinals hat; a '60s-era Champion baracuta/gas jacket; a puce turtleneck and a Nike track jacket best described as Russian.) I really don't know much about Stussy besides what I picked up as an observer. The eight ball T-shirt paces the jacket but is hard to find. They re-make it now and then but it doesn't looks as good, even though Stussy hasn't updated their font or logo (to their credit) in any of the intervening years. Stussy had a store in SoHo I used to visit every time I came to New York but never bought anything. They were out of jeans the first time I went and I never got over it. My friend Rich, who is skinny and slight, bought a pair of them in size 36 waist and they had fit him great. When I tried them on, they didn't. The store's still around but it moved to where Union used to be. Union is now only in LA. Shawn Stussy, from Orange County, started the company with his assistant(2) in 1980 after writing his handstyle on his boards. It's the same now and it's great. Later principals in the business involved one Frank Sinatra Jr. (no relation). Shawn Stussy is 54 or 55 and doesn't look it. He alternates between a Van Dyke and a goatee just at the tip of his chin and a soul patch. He has better hair than most newscasters, past or present. I read that he still surfs... The company has been heavily associated with the following scenes: 1992 Sassy Magazine, 1994 vegetarian politically-aware straight-edge, 1990s New York skateboarding, W. Bush-administration-era brand collaborations, all-eras California, all eras surfing, something happening now, etc. A dozen stupid youth movements have an interest in the eight ball, but none has a claim. Last year I emailed the address on the website for S-Double, his own brand whose twin focus is Oxfords and dusty California vintage, with a question about boot sizing, and Shawn replied. He used a lot of ellipses in his answer... and offered to mail me a second pair if mine didn't fit.... and cover the postage... I had emailed him mid-winter, and figured he wasn't out surfing. Now that I think about it, he emailed back in the middle of the day. People surf in winter. I'm sure he was out that morning, and then just worked from home.
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(1) While on his, he "inquired about purchasing a Bernese Sennenhund"--he later did--and saw a reproduction of his family's coat of arms. I'd like to see that coat of arms as well. Also worth noting from the story: The foundation's board "also includes other prominent Americans with Swiss ties such as sex therapist Dr. Ruth Westheimer and U.S. Rep. Tammy Baldwin, a Wisconsin Democrat." Baldwin is now a senator--is Roethlisberger on the board, or is the "also" just bad grammar?
(2) Pretty impressive move to start a business with your assistant.