It’s mid-week, which means there are furniture deals on Craigslist, 1stDibs, so on.
Some info on the best I find, with quick hit links (just good shit, no jokes) below. If you’re looking for something specific (dresser, couch, leather pants, propeller beanie, tassel loafers, evening gown, red bottoms, leather propeller beanie marble coffee table, Cassina furniture, fleece-lined Lee Jeans, fleece-lined propeller beanie, dolls that look you in the eye, avant-garde tea services.) let me know. Remember if you want something right away it will cost you, and if you can wait, it never will.
NEW YORK
Ferrieri Kartell storage can, $140: Seems like a new production., the originals from the 1970s are more weather-beaten and measure an 1/8th inch taller, something only about 10,000 people in New York can immediately distinguish by looking at Craigslist photos. Am I one of them? This seller is by Lincoln Center, I wonder if they ever see Robert Caro walking around.
Percival Lafer lounge chair, $1500: This thing is in dogged condition and is also mid—better Lafer is bright and the best is his modular sofa—but I don’t know, overstuffed leather is always worth looking at. What is it Oscar Wilde said? We’re all sitting on Percival Lafers, but some of us are trying to find an Anfibio. The seller is considering trades, too, I wonder if he will take one of my old synthesizers.
Rudi Stern lamp/totem poles, $1800: I don’t remember if I wrote about these, but man, this fool has been trying to sell these forever on CL, and they are so good, so I never mind when they show up in my searches. There’s a few of these tall super-modern looking athlete-height lamps(1) from the late 70s through the mid-80s, all suspend time, and make you stare. Not many reach Craigslist, and in the history of lighting few lamps produced before or since have been similar, or even close. Which is nice. This Stern is closer to a de Rougemont totem than a lamp, and the inclusion here is an excuse to share the photo again and make the world a better place. Breathtaking.
Quick Hits
Fritz Hansen teak dot stool, $175 (super old and really beautiful, if you don’t have a lot of awesome furniture, invest in this and stare); Cassina CAB leather 412 chairs, $800 (these are great because the legs are leather); Poulsen style pendant lamp, $350 (mid, but nice price for statement overhead lighting); eight Breuer chairs, $100 each, Montauk (in rotten shape and I’m not the best about authenticating these); Baughman vinyl/cloth swivel chair, $950 (super sick, simple, not expensive)
LOS ANGELES
Fake department store leather coffee table, $190: This is a good-looking leather terra cotta (? somehow) West Coast comfortable-home 1970s alternative to the Pierre Cardin cocaine furniture that came out from Miami around the same era. It has the same dimensions but isn’t stark or bright. Made by Robinson department store, whatever that is. It’d look good on a shag carpet by a giant nine-person couch shaped like a shoehorn, or in a recording studio. “Where’s the tuner?” “By the Cherokee keys, on the terra cotta table.” “Cool, be right back, trading some synthesizers for this beat-up leather chair.” Cheap!
Lagardo Tackett double cone planter, $2200: I have one-way tape on some windows in my apartment because I live on the first floor and face a building courtyard full of children. The result is only mid light. So half the plant spaces in here are not amenable to any greenery above the “medium effort required” growing grade. But what can you do? I would rather go to law school than move to Los Angeles, but every place there has greenhouse light and the town has more Lagardo Tackett planters than Paris has museums. So I see the appeal. I can’t think of a surer sign of making it than buying one of these at market prices.
Jens Risom floating coffee table, $1500: I was talking to someone this weekend who was saying mid-century modern is over and people are moving past it. At least that’s what he said when I explained to him the trouble I had selling my (breathtaking) Eames compact sofa on Craigslist (discounted price to my readers). Furnishing a home entirely from pieces produced between 1951 and 1965 is a twisted way to decorate, sure. And difficult furniture makes life that much better. But the best furniture of that era is without affect and can’t really be hemmed in by generational strictures. Like this coffee table. It is so clean and pretty. If I lived in LA, I would put the one book I own on it. This thing, on the other hand, also by Risom, is hideous and expensive. So this fool has a point.
Pietro Costantini dining chairs, 6 for $550: I don’t like these (the wood ones he made are a lot better), but this is an OK price for six presentable chairs. Maybe I am not educated enough to understand what these chairs mean. They look like a mess. Still, hard to find purposeful ones in the two-figure range very often.
Aluminum Kama tables, four-figure price range: Expensive but worth considering, at least aesthetically. Sometimes you have to buy new productions, it’s not like good design decisions stopped being made forty years ago. I bet there is a way to make this work. Way too expensive though. Also, in the main photo they have a few of the My Freedamn books, which I don’t need to mention are required archival material for anyone with a passing interest in vintage clothing. The best MF book was the limited-edition one from a few years ago that came with a plywood cover.
Ron Rezek lamps, $900: Rezek is probably the most important Californian lamp maker of the past 50 years and these are as good as any he’s made, kinda Memphis-y. Not super cheap but better than legit any of the lamps on New York craigslist at any given time. One of his lamps was in HEAT, the movie, like all over it. So I guess this lamp for sale here is not as good as the Heat lamp. That’s the discipline.
Quick Hits
Cheap mid-century daybed, $500 (doubt this is a Nelson replica since it has linen storage, and it’s in real bad shape, but that could be fixed); Danish teak coffee table with rounded edges, $440 (somehow both tacky and spare, really great); 50s wooden obelisk, $450 (too expensive, actually worth about $40, put your gum on there); big fruitbowl, for $35 (very mid but super cheap); tambour Pedersen credenza, $2200 (a stone classic)
CHICAGO
Scarpa glass table, $450: I like these glass tables, once you start working on them you get paid more.
Thanks for reading.
Snake
(1) Tom Herman needs to go