Snake Auction Observer: good furniture, undervalued, or eternal, all selected off LiveAuctioneers.com, with an emphasis this week on tables and cheap seating. Auctions below…
Housekeeping:
No stories with my byline published this week, but readers might be interested to know I hit the gym again this week after a couple weeks working out at home. I love landmine training — it is the future of fitness. In landmine training, you whip a barbell attached to a landmine (thing in the ground) in the air super fast. It’s great. Part of a whole series of dark workouts that have come after the standard barbell work the bourgeoisie became interested in during the Obama admin. I continue to think compound barbell movements are only for the extremely mobile and strong. Very very neurologically taxing way to grow muscle… or maybe I should just rephrase it as — if you can’t touch your toe standing on one leg blindfolded on a swiss ball, you should not squat unsupervised. Look, barbell work is great. If you are Slavic it might be the true path; but it also requires much equipment and proprioception, and while there are infinite points of failure, unless you’re a total gimp the lift is going to work anyways, whether it’s done awfully or not. Which means: muscles get cheated.
Going to see SUEDE on Monday at Kings Theatre in Flatbush in Brooklyn. If you’re going and would like to meet up, shoot me a note. Or just look for me by the soft pretzel station at exactly 9:00 PM. I’ll be wearing jeans and a T-shirt.
Live Auctions:
Modular Giotto Stoppino sideboard, CT: Stoppino’s best known for his A-shaped magazine rack (you’ve seen it); he’s a plastic guy in a lot of ways, big fun stuff from the 1970s, but his sideboards get play too, abroad anyways, many of them in nice regal woods and corporate than the M. rack. (Best is the Parioli, with the chrome.) This thing… never seen this thing. Is it actually by GS? I don’t know, no markings. But it looks cool, isn’t expensive, and pickup’s in Ct., which is where Hatebreed is from; item is ending Wed. afternoon. $200
Francois Monnet coffee table, CT: Can’t remember if I wrote about this guy, on whom there is little info, but this table was produced for Kappa, an I think French company, in the 60s/70s, and sat alongside designs by Maria Pergay (who’s goated). Always tricky to authenticate furniture with no markings… but this isn’t exactly an Eames, so the fake market isn’t as robust. Plus, this is Monnet’s best work and Kappa’s best work—the other items he did for them aren’t as direct (his glass tables have too many ideas); though, to be honest, Pergay’s tables are as good. Retail on the FM runs $7,000, auctions have no real history. Fully a steal, and Snake’s Lock of the Week at $200. Someone… buy this. Ending Wed.
Custom Richard Neutra desk, CA: Standout auction in a good one full of high reserve showy items with serious provenance and history; most of the crap they’re selling skirts mid-modern but is more fancy and rich. This desk… brilliant. Seems self evident how good it is. One of the best things about modernist furniture, to me anyways, is that the best designs are the point at which centuries’ worth of tradition and craftsmanship and history just break down, all within a couple of decades not very far from our lives now. Desks looked one way for a millenium, and then this. So much disrespect. Why should a desk look like a desk? But Neutra’s remains quite conservative. His name is also on the best Snake shirt (2018). How big a workspace do you need, anyways? Really, though, it’s a planter auction: lots of nice anon/Tackett-type planters for very cheap. Very, very hard to find a good planter. Like really. $4,000
Cardin burl/brass coffee table, Austin: Love the Cardin literal signature on this (and many other) pieces of his furniture… this particular model stands out from a lot of the stern and serious burlwood furniture people like now, because the yellow looks like sunshine (or Griffith’s hair in Berserk) (or a piece of fatty cheesecake). This is Cardin’s coffee table shape, he has a few of these. Never seen it in burl, usually they’re black and aluminum. Some have holes on one side for plants:
Great. Or put a soda fountain in there, remotes, or some sort of fish tank. A mega deal at $225
Boeri Ghost chair for Fiam, Chicago: Wrote about this chair (and a few others) a few years ago for GQ; no Ghosts have sold since on LA, making the potential price results here a possible referendum on the efficacy of my writing. But not really. This chair is one of the biggest ass-beaters ever to be moulded to plastic; like lots of Boeri’s furniture, it’s tough and immediate and strong. Many architects design furniture, but she’s pretty alone in hers looking like they’re actually buildings. Very dominating. Someone needs to go full Peter Bogdanovich and stage a retrospective of Boeri’s career at a major museum. Will it be me? Depends, I have a busy couple weeks ahead. It’s not so much that people don’t give her the respect she deserves, it’s just that we’re not yet, as a society, at the point where enough people understand what exactly furniture designers do and what different furniture means, looks like,etc. Besides, like, Sottsass. Maybe the key to understanding furniture is daily serial repetitive Instagram posts. Not even being critical; it’s a helpful way to get images under one’s skin. Good for lore, too. Deal at $750
Saarinen tulip stool, NJ: Perfect stool, very simple, correct proportions, nice leather; one of these items that are required for an interior so it may fully ascend to the next level (i.e. everything is good, even the small stuff). You can buy this thing even if you don’t have good big pieces yet (couch, lamp, table 1-2-3). It’s the price of a pair of sneakers. Or a dozen eggs. That’s what they cost, right? $200? Myself, I would put my remotes on this stool, although I have a dedicated ashtray for this exact purpose. $200; nice ones with the leather sell for double this price
Yrjo Kukkapuro office chair, St. Louis: Makes sense that the most cursed town in America is selling this chair… looks like a harsh ultrareal photograph more than a piece of furniture.YK is a Finnish architect whose furniture sits in the middle of everything good; his chairs hang out at around $1,000, but this exact one hasn’t sold in at least a couple of years, and prices are bumpy. House also has a trio of De Sede easy chairs (70s, no model name I can swing) that are excellent. Perfect, and only $50
De Sede 169 Ambuhler sofa, NYC: Another week, another A-minus sofa selling for the price of a night at the movies and a steak at Odeon and maybe an Uber home over the bridge or uptown. I could write newsletters about what possessions actually mean and if we should all stop buying things and how these items affect our individuality, but who gives a shit? This is service. If you have worthless furniture in your house but a closet full of good clothes, you need to make changes. The net benefit from an X+1 shirt is nothing if you’re sitting on a sack of potatoes or something from Crate and Barrel. I give it about two years before the secret is out on design like it is about vintage now. Snake is the only path to real education: There still are seams everywhere you look, if you know where to look. Buy a very good couch now and move on with your life. This one’s fine, I think. $200
Presenting a new feature: GOT AWAY—breaking down the price of an already ended item:
USM Haller 20-door cabinet, NJ: Great auction; sold day of press time; the house also had an 18-door (looks identical). Hallers cost an arm and a leg new; I didn’t love them at first but they get better more I see them. Very simple and plain, and they take on whatever characteristics of whatever place they are in. Used to be these were only in the Hermès store. Not anymore. Sometimes you have to stop resisting. Not really a re-sale market for these, since no one ever gets rid of theirs, though when they do, prices vary, esp. since all used Hallers are too good to be true. Depends how big the piece is, and other factors. I can see these going for $4,000, I can see them going for four times that. This auction was at $2,250 when I wrote this yesterday; ended for $4,250 (not a bad prediction), retail on this has to be in the mid-five figures. LA is the path.
Quick hits:
Francois Monnet Zig Zag shelf unit, $1,000, CT (massive, good)
Thanks for reading.
Snake
🫡🫡