Snake Auction Observer: good furniture, undervalued, or eternal, all selected off LiveAuctioneers.com, with an emphasis this week on Deco furniture and credenzas. Immediate auctions at the top, but first, housekeeping:
Housekeeping:
Books are shipping, most people should have gotten theirs by now. They look great—see photo above for representative reader displays. More coming, always available from Shining Life Press. Party/event in NYC this winter, info here.
Wrote a couple more fitness stories for GQ — this is a furniture newsletter but I write a lot about strength and health and fitness.
One story is about nutritional supplementation—focusing on the nutrients toughest to get from real foods/groceries, for reasons of soil erosion or just micronutrient quantity. IMO (from talking to people, reading, self) the ideal diet is: getting most of your nutrients from real whole foods and using supps here and there to shore up patches and get over the top. Magnesium, zinc, black seed oil and so on.
Second is about chin-up bars, but really more about why adding sub-limit workout routines—i.e. doing a handful of chins whenever you can, as often as you can; similar—over time builds up real strength. The idea now that we have to work out until we’re drenched in sweat or hurting is true, sure, but frankly it’s as much more for the lifter’s psychological benefit (people love to work out like crazy to get their minds off their lives—understandable) than their physical needs. Truth is we don’t NEED to go over the edge unless we 1. regularly eat like a cruise ship passenger 2. have a severe fitness goal that’s immediate. Really, we need to over time get stronger, and we need to move. Pepper in reps here and there. The catch is this sort of syncs up to the Paulie Cicero Cutty Sark scene in Goodfellas: greasing the groove takes more reps, over time, than we think. And we need to hit the numbers every day. It’s a different kind of hard. Feel the burn.
Auctions:
Frankl living, dining room set, NYC: Man’s search for seating? This thing is ending in an hour or so and is going for $45,000. Paul Frankl was one of the big dogs of Art Deco—his clocks are my favorite—and everything he made sells for cash, with the rattan work (here) going for a little more than one might expect from the medium. Though in this case the item is a lot (as in several items), and so maybe that’s why. Also, his Skyscraper step table looks a lot like the Umbo. Anyone else get the constant IG story ads from the one guy in North Carolina with the kid and a skid worth of Umbos? I like him again, he’s been selling these things since at least 2013.
Ello brass credenza, NYC: Full deco, full taste… Ello began well post Deco, in the 50s, and shut down about a decade ago, with a body of work mostly revolving around gold and silver, big rectangle shapes, the sort of stuff doctors’ wives used to buy when left to themselves. Prices are all over the map for this outfitter, but this particular credenza sold just this year for $5,500. Deco is the path—it’s a nice corrective against the low calorie furnishing style a lot of people cower themselves into, but it’s also shaped traditionally enough so that it doesn’t mortgage the room. If it stays under $2,100 it could be a steal; at $1,400 now
Atkinson for Thonet chairs, NYC: Beautiful set of five plain bent plywood Thonet chairs—Thonet is the Deutsche Grammophon of furniture—designed by Joe Atkinson, who seems to have mostly made this chair and variations on it—cloth, no arms, etc. More design data, as usual, is in auction history than online, with LA’s search history revealing a handful more designs, including some snappy Aalto-like stools and this absolutely crushing chair with a set of rods on the side that sold for $10. Unbelievable. Nobody knows anything. This quintet, from 1950, is slightly more expensive than the secret truss rod chair, $1,300
Kasparian lounge chair, NYC: I used to work at the National Hockey League for a few years and on sick days I would email my boss and say, in the email, “Hey work — I can’t come in today, I’ve come down with an acute case of Darius Kasparitis.” But now that I get a lot of zinc in my diet that doesn’t happen anymore. They’ve been trying to sell this Armenian guy’s La-Z-Boy since before I worked there. $500
Laszlo bleached oak basket desk for Brown Saltman, NYC: Same house as many of these items I’m highlighting, this one might be the highlight—the basket design here sits between Brazilian and homemade, and is a rare warm offering from Paul Laszlo, whose best stuff—a lounge chair and bench that’s kind of a smoothed out Chandigarh—is very, very strong, and pretty muted, maybe for that reason never seems to get discussed as much as it should. Major piece here; these all seem to sell for 5 large. $1,300
Six Saporiti Omaggi-style chairs, Alameda CA: Shaped like but quite far from Saporiti’s Omaggi chairs, which are more whimsical, and play with the chair limit —seatbacks that go below the ass-frame, or whatever it’s called—and which have actual thought behind them, unlike these things, which just look pretty good. Though looking good’s not bad. These are cheap, and research reveals Alameda is near San Fransisco. $200
Fake Loewy DF2000 credenza, Towson MD: I remember in the early days of my furniture acquisition period and the very late days of my sneaker buying era I chanced upon a pair of Nike Air Carnivores on eBay in a listing that had all the tells of a fake. The shoes, originals from the mid 90s, seemed a little bit off—bad toe shape, weird colors—and the seller, just going off grammar, had a sort of sliminess about them, the kind that shows up when someone from the outside who knows how to make money comes inside and starts cutting corners as a way to money. They didn’t smell real. But the thing is… who’s going to fake pair of Carnivores? To make a fake sneaker you can’t just make one—there’s a demand principle here that justifies the small investment into getting a plant to cough up a shoe, and the Carnivore, then, and probably now, didn’t warrant it. So one of the Occam’s razor laws of vintage was that obscure clothing doesn’t really get faked. Furniture, though, is a different game… Loewy’s credenzas are their own world, and have been getting faked for at least 40 years—Treco, from Canada, made the best variants. This, though, was made sometime in the past 15 years by a company based out of Brooklyn. App colors… but who’s to tell another person how to make their money? And, more importantly, Loewy’s original design is so nails that it’s hard to go wrong, even when you go very wrong. $200
Bellini for Cassina leather settee, IL: Another week, another perfect condition undervalued flawless sofa highlighted on Snake Auction Observer. This one’s by Mario Bellini, an Italian architect—the ideal nationality and profession for a designer of any item whatsoever—who also did the Camaleonda sofa. In/near Chicago, which means it can be shipped to New York fairly easily. A chair like this went for $2,500, some settees went for less, but were very new and had the bad leather. Deal at $850
McCobb dresser on bench, SF: Many people are over mid-century modern; I am sure everyone who proclaims so loudly this doesn’t have any good furniture of their own. Which is OK if you’re under 30. As for everyone else—well, taste is taste. Doesn’t matter. But the thing is about that design movement—several instances of the dresser on the bench. One of the harshest, most functional and advanced furniture ideas of all time…. maybe other eras of furniture made pieces like this, but it’s best associated with MCM. Miller did this for Nelson—they used to be everywhere, now they’re not—and this McCobb. Not much auction history here, just an inferior Paul M model for $600 a few years ago. Very perfect, and the Snake Lock of the Week at $900
Past auction:
St. Marie rosewood, chrome credenza, NYC: Sideboards, credenzas are hard buys, with most of the production coming out in the 50s and clustering around teak and super Danish mid-modern forms. Nearly everything except for Loewys looks like that. It’s Not an aesthetic for everyone. This, though, is a very sui generis piece—not a lot of those in furniture, fewer with storage—modern, very staid and plain, but a little advanced. It’s great. It’s ending right now, and is local, though not technically, according to the auctioneer. The company, St. Marie & Laurent, mostly seems to make these credenzas, and a similarly-designed table, and their beautiful French Canadian name makes me feel like I’m back home. SOLD for $5,000
Quick hits:
Baughman ‘60s wood end tables NYC $800 (FLW style)
Toshiyuki Kita for Cassina Dodo lounge $400 Alameda (perfect)
Thanks for reading.
Snake