Snake America Wednesday furniture auction roundup 001
Craigslist finds in New York and Los Angeles and Chicago
Trying a new series where I outright recommend deals on Craigslist, 1stDibs, so on. I’ll link to the best I find with info on each item and quick hit links (just good shit, no jokes) below. If there is something in particular you’re looking for (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, etc.) let me know. I have found these things before, would love to find things for my readers. Remember if you want something right away it will cost you, and if you can wait, it never will.
Craigslist
Memphis-type Baughman sofa on NYC Craiglslist, $2500: this is absolutely an fucking insane deal (ok maybe get it for 17) and if it wasn’t too wide for my apartment I would buy it, despite being illiquid atm (severely leveraged on gum futures that will pay off after Hallowe’en). Not a Memphis Milano couch (that’s a design group), it is designed by Milo Baughman. (The most accurate way to describe Memphis Milano and Milo Baughman’s design relationship here is that only a handful of bands were in the youth crew but many sounded like them.) For the price of gum futures or rent in Chelsea you can stare beauty in the eye and then sit on it. Memphis used to go for no money:
I suppose in a sense it still does. It is crazy Ettore Sottsass has six times as many Instagram followers as Texas Longhorns football coach Tom Herman(1) and this couch is sitting on Craigslist collecting dust. Maybe it is because it is in New Jersey. Maybe it is because Baughman is not strictly Memphis. But it is not crazy. It is easy to go on Instagram and look at furniture that is not for sale and harder to find it and buy it. Unless you are me or unless you are reading this newsletter right now and aren’t weighed down by tax-incentivized gum futures. Baughman also made an incredible Memphis dinette for Thayer Coggin:
(source). It is so good. If Shoe Bomber Richard Reid was sitting at this dinette eating steak, I would sit down next to him and ask him to pass him the salt without a second thought. Here is a nice Chicago Tribune article about Baughman from the 1980s, which is when this couch came out. I did not know it was pronounced Boffman.
Joe Colombo’s Triedro lamp for Stilnovo, NY CL, $800, accepts offers: Not one of Colombo’s best lamps (Vadmecum, Spider, Acrilica, the list goes on), but a nice, plain industrial one. The price is too high. The seller says they take offers and are therefore begging to be insulted with lowballs. Why not degrade them today? 200 is a deal, if you can get it for three you should. I guess.
Brass Jim Bindman lamp for Rainbow, $500: These go for $1200 on 1stDibs which means their real value is 1/3 of that (tops) which means this seller is overpricing. But they are in Carroll Gardens and money should stay in the neighborhood. In my head these lamps remind me of the Flos Piani but they are really not very similar.
Cado-ish wall system for under a G: Because this wall system isn’t designed by Poul Cadovius it is not worth more than a couple sentences. $700 is a good price, and under a thou (they’re asking $950) is respectable if you have a good job, because wall systems fill up a room and Cado under $2,000 is so rare, maybe an annual listing if that. This trash knockoff wood isn’t as lustrous as the real Danish deal, and its edges are duller. But one of my Furniture Rules is any statement piece over 84” and under $1,000 is a deal and worth a coin flip whether to buy.
Quick hits:
Paul Frankl end table for a G (store in Williamsburg that has some other OK stuff), Baughman burl credenza for $1850 (NJ…insanely fucking sick, not writing about this b/c two Baughmans…), long-ass Poul Kjaerholm for Fritz Hansen leather bench for $16K (way overpriced, seller near City Subs, at the bottom of seller listing is this message:
no one is more deranged in America than someone with an Internet connection who thinks they have important furniture, this fool was asking 16k for this on Sunday, by Christmas he’ll be paying me), $200 chrome mushroom lamps, Queens (good deal), Wendell Castle grandma chair in Red Hook $800 (insane fire — fuck, it expired).
IN LOS ANGELES:
Charlton fake-ass Mulhauser chair for $400 (decent deal, 1960s production and nice quality), Bernhard Pedersen credenza with the soft corner edges (these are the best non-Loewy/Rietveld credenzas out there: soft-corner with tambour doors, $2200), $2000 Eames airport/shoe-shine sofa (there’s one of these at LaGuardia near the Air Canada terminal but only two seats. incredible piece), $1200 Kienzle safari chair (should be cheaper but a good chair), Sonneman for Kovacs feather lamp for $250 (not into this one), $400 Blue Miller side chair (blue kinda nice, still overpriced, this guy is twisted), pair of Gainey planters $200 (p. great deal tbh, you can never have enough planters).
LONE CHICAGO QUICK HIT:
Eames DSX-1 padded red chair $100, ‘70s (decent price for a mid chair).
Thanks for reading. I stand with Deadspin staff!
Snake
(1) who is a disgrace