Snake Auction Observer: good furniture, undervalued, or eternal, all selected off LiveAuctioneers.com. This week—Murano glass, van der Rohe, cursed medical furn. and a maybe Bertoia. Immediate auctions at the top, and Quick Hits at the bottom… but first:
Housekeeping:
Alsatian food sucks—everyone knows this but no one, until me, has said it.
Not a bad weekend from Ferrari. Are they getting it together? Time will tell.
Met Gala not bad. Lagerfeld’s diet book is really the most accurate and honest literature written on the subject there is. He began his diet in bad faith (to wear skinnies), but he is right that to lose weight you’re going to be hungry sometimes. It’s crazy he didn’t wildly upset his hormonal profile only eating protein shakes and steamed apples, but his childhood diet of Alsatian food probably helped. Rich and creative people can be bulletproof. Lame no one at the gala wore the Goodfellas/Karl collar…
Auctions:
Murano glass chandelier, Ill., in-house shipping: Primary color chandelier made from Murano glass—handmade, Venice, 1,000 years old, art—that house says is in style of Gio Ponti. It’s close to this fixture of Ponti’s and the two share colors. Ponti himself did many vases, sconces, Murano lamps but was better known for other material; Murano glass probably has a bigger footprint than his works, though. This one, even though not real GP, is great. Perfect 1980s primary colors—identical to the Duracraft DS-1510 (in the back of a One Eyed God Prophecy live show) and the Zenith 590 stapler, now available through the MoMA store—but with a mature shape. Those two things slide this into the sweet spot right between post-Italian and Italian design... No real price, though Ponti Murano chandeliers run at least €5,500—with his other Murano glass cheaper. House is otherwise auctioning off garbage outright. $1,100
van der Rohe MR10 chair, NJ: Nice and harsh, as ever, from van der Rohe, and a little-seen piece. He designed the MR10 in 1927, reportedly basing the design on 1800s rocking chairs, like Thonets. Still in production from Knoll—cane is an option—and fakes abound, as do colors. Scores sit on Pamono and 1stDibs. Still, a rare chair: not in price or production, but visibility. It’s not often in fleas, not on curated IG accounts. I suppose the MR20 is even more rare. It has stranger arms. MR10s go for no money: five went for $700 earlier this year, and singles can be found under 2. House is in Passaic, NJ, not too far from city. It has a Soft Pad, a teak go kart (not bad), and some nice plywood kids furniture, but nothing else. $150
Knoll Bertoia side chair, Va., IHS: A yellow iteration that the house says is only in the manner of a Bertoia Side. Might not be real. Is it? The angles and legs look right, and Knoll on their site has an option for a yellow base. So it might be. Might not be. One wonders whether it matters. There are bigger differences in shape and structure between new Bertoia Sides and old (metal width, angles) than there seem to be between this maybe yellow and a real yellow. This brings up a bigger point that today, I think, many have too much respect for items and retailers, and don’t respect fake items enough—they only get respect when they’re narrativized. This is an advanced state of spectacle, in which importance moves away from the item to the label. (This is why NFTs, sleepy designer vintage, organic food exist…) Of course we’ve all advanced past things having to be real to be good… but I wonder why so many fake items need to have an argument or story behind them, or need to be justified on the grounds of the real item to work. What about just something made by someone for money? I don’t see this as a form of injustice or bad aesthetics, though. Just space for a consumer who’s willing to bet on their taste and intellect to wrest something from the market for themselves on their terms.
More on Bertoia: this chair and the Diamond are his most recognized works, but he was a sculptor—the Spray sculpture (you’ve seen it)—and designed jewelry (beautiful) and also sound sculptures i.e. ambient music. Lots of what he made is very good, much of it goes for a lot of money. The furniture, art, the records, all collectible, all expensive. What is wild is that until even recently there was a Chinese Wall between his prodigious visual and musical output: record people mostly didn’t know he did furniture, sculpture and jewelry, and most design people were ignorant of his recordings. Of course, no one can keep up with everybody. But the point seems that there’s a lot out there. It’s not like Bertoia’s some also-ran... the people deep in both fields know their stuff. And yet, blind spots. Important to keep in mind if you ever feel down and think everything’s been done. That is light years from happening and you can expect to have your hair blown back once a week. Back to the chair: lots have sold though none with the same frame. House has a skid worth of great Italian design that’s well highlighted in the Quick Hits below. $50
Leon Rosen for Pace Boca desk, CT: About once a month I find an auction for demonic-looking office furniture. Sometimes it’s for a doctor’s office, which makes philosophical sense: anyone who works in medicine or knows doctors or who has had a conversation with one will tell you that industry is demonic. This, though, has no such provenance but is objectively demonic (and unholy) because of design reasons. There’s a marriage of contrasting shapes and quite harsh geometry that comes off as a crafted exposition of the Black Sabbath devil’s note: very cramped and tense. Also the wood is unnatural. Its color is both florid and synthetic. Leon Rosen founded Pace, his collection had lots of smoked glass. LR for P desks have hovered at $1,000, though the burl items fetch more. Auction, in Greenwich, Ct., boasts art, some nice porcelain, a Bottega bag from the old days, and rugs. Demon desks such as these must have intrinsic supernatural abilities of money luck. $200
Charlotte Perriand door, Chicago: I always mistake this door with the Cini Boeri door she designed in the early 1980s; unacceptable, but because few doors have designers. This is because doors are the last item to upgrade. If you’re there, then you’ve done everything else. Both Perriand and Boeri are giants, but Perriand is on another level: her crap (goated) goes for a lot of money still, even following the necessary mid-century modern market dip. This is a sign that some parts of the world still work correctly. This one was designed for Les Arcs ski resort in ‘67—others in gunmetal grey—and looks like something taken off a submarine. Prices vary: sometimes in the hundreds, sometimes skirting $10,000. Part of a Wright auction full of hits. Some steals, and a few others discussed below. $200
Cavour armchair (three designers), Chicago: Rare in journalism to see a three-byline story—they would occasionally pop up in the New York Times during the early days of the Trump administration, or on reportage regarding Papal procedure. Rarer still to see a chair designed by three people. Until now. The Cavour, produced in 1959, for Sim by Vittorio Gregotti, Lodovico Meneghetti and Giotto Stoppino. Three architects, with much of the literature surrounding the item putting Stoppino—plastic magazine racks for Kartell, plastic nesting stools—Gregotti is an architect, as is Meneghetti… they had a fruitful working relationship, making this chair (Compasso D’Oro winner), a lounge chair for Sim in the ‘50s, a residential complex in Cameri (unreal) and this perfect lamp, which is on collection at MoMA. This one predates all of that except the lounge chair, and is early, and simple design, quiet and well ahead of the plastic boom that would define GS’ career. (The other guys made fewer industrial items.) Also a Compasso D’Oro winner, still in production, and the lowest initial mention of an Italian designer by name in an Auction Observer so far. (Bertoia doesn’t count because he moved to Detroit.) Cavours only seem to get listed in Europe and don’t sell then. A steal at $100
Pierre Cardin table lamp, Chicago: Much Cardin in Snake always—he is a more successful multi-hyphenate than Bertoia and even Nick Cannon—with this lamp one of his best. Super quiet, simple, beautiful, direct but also gilded and feminine in the way much of the furniture that gets discussed here is not… it has that Phoebe Philo jaune-gris palette rarely never gets nailed successfully… but, when it does… one can see why this aesthetic is popular. Very pacifying and luxe. Who doesn’t want that? A beautiful piece that so immediately encapsulates its style and is so exact in its small details that is a perfect representative of a design style, and, what’s more, would succeed well among much different furniture. By arguing for itself it can handle the opposite. $450
Sottsass Palm Springs dining table, Chicago: Sottsass again (last week I ran over a few), a superior item than the de Lucchi Lido sofa (linked in the QH below) because it is stronger and more practical. An honest-to-goodness practical and legible dining table, a good 7’ long (length of a full-size couch) that can be played up or down. Such high art should not be reduced to such simple practicalities, but consumers can be as disrespectful as they like. Major Memphis piece to me, and frankly, among the best dining tables ever made. All this while being somewhere below the really electrifying of Sottsass’ works. These run all over, anywhere in the lou thousands to near 10K; $1,800
Michael Thonet Sedan chair, Atlanta, IHS: Wrote something long about Thonets that doesn’t need explicating, but would like to just discuss this chair—one of the wilder ones ever designed. Designed as a litter or palanquin, which are conveyances designed to be sat in and which are able to be carried by other people. They sometimes have them in movies.
There are theories behind monarchist furniture like this, but they all sound critical, and the main emphasis here, from me, is that the shape on this one works even better than the perfect arcs on the original Thonets. This one takes up more space and is fully three-dimensional, like the Vitruvian man. Stare at a palanquin long enough and you’ll realize you don’t want to be the man dying in the chair or the suckers carrying it somewhere. Why take either? No chair exactly like this has sold on LA; the house also has vases, beautiful Black Americana ceramics, old Warhol car calendars, some Shaker boxes—many things to look at or to buy. $100
Quick Hits:
Stoppino Kartell yellow stacking tables (set of 3), Va., $520, IHS
Loewry DF2000 grey/black credenza, ‘59 marking, Va., $920, IHS
Thanks for reading.
Snake
Hey Sami. Saw a few newsletters ago that you are in Paris for some time. I’m furnishing my new place here and always find myself longing for pieces you link in this newsletter. Most of the time shipping to Europe is extremely pricey or nonsensical. So I thought I’d ask if you ever considered writing a Paris edition, if that is something you have been looking into during your time here?