Snake is a weekly newsletter focusing on furniture—sometimes through auctions: good ones, deals, value and other. This week, auctions for Japanese, Italian design, Herman Miller, lighting, a bumper crop of very cheaply-priced classics. Immediate auctions at the top, and Quick Hits at the bottom, but first….
Housekeeping:
Classifieds at the bottom, below Quick Hits—a Truck sofa (Japan), Aalto chairs and a table. DM me if you’re interested and I’ll send you seller’s email. Or call 1-900-middleman and ask for my assistant Esteban.
Ferrari on the podium. Will they keep it together?
Mid-century mark—50 auction weeks observed. Thank you to all the readers, bidders, sellers and everyone in between. I will be doing this newsletter for a long time, so tell a friend.
Auctions:
Toshiyuki Kita Tomo lamp for Luci, CT: Subtlety from Toshiyuki Kita through poppy, direct design. Kita began his career with lighting. His earliest designs are the Tako and Kyo lamps, both from 1971, both made with washi paper; this one’s about 10-15 years newer and is more in line with the work Kita did over the rest of his career:
Which is internationalist and modern. This lamp’s somewhere between Kita’s poppier work and the held-back aesthetic of Bob Sonneman—identical round dome over the bulb, similar 3/2 T sticking out—but more refined and uptown looking (Sonneman often used more economical, or at least simpler looking materials). This one’s for Luci Italia (as were some Sonnemans)… but is not on Kita’s (great) website’s archive page. Luci’s done a lot, including the Frattini that we all know:
And others by Shigeaki Asahara, etc. Part of a great auction full of items super in the Snake wheelhouse—Danish wood (cheap Mogensen style tables, this reading desk); an OK priced set of Russell Wright flatware, a Pesce book—with other highlights in Quick Hits. $300
Bellini Arco chairs for Heller, CT: Same house as above. These are to my knowledge the first chairs designed by a father-son team—or at least the first modern team; I bet lots of Shaker and other prevert furniture (occasionally highlighted here) was produced with filial constraint. The Bellinis are a massive family, not in terms of BMI but rather output, with Mario having designed the Camaleonda sofa (round and bubbly Italian sofa that you’ve seen; every three months some hillbilly on social is explaining the difference between a real and a fake one), and the 414 chair (a Snake favorite; regal, affordable, always on auction tri-state). His son Claudio (great name for a kid)’s body of work is much less enthralling, but has some hits. There’s the Cilindro chair, among the better trad/new pieces this past decade, fully antiseptic but somehow alive; the Elinor table, rich and good and the Long Beach sofa’s a fine execution of the design it’s going for.
These chairs, from 2001, are the seating analog to Heller’s classic plastic design—Vignelli plates, 1964, you’ve seen them—and therefore are necessary. So much of Old Bellini’s work is gilded, and Claudio’s stuff is so neutral. Somehow here they’ve made something simple and alive. Nothing else plastic in the universe is like that—only what comes out of Italy for sitting and eating. A set of four Arco chairs sold once for $100, in 2015; other (Old) Bellini Heller chairs, which are inferior, don’t go for very much, either. Snake’s Lock of the Week at only $60
Haller system cabinet, Chicago: USM Haller does one thing several ways and the resulting resale market is so slim that used items hitting saved searches is enough to create a full state of confusion. I wrote about it in a letter a few weeks ago:
After publish one source told me the reason for the listings is that work from home has bottomed out the furniture market; furniture re-sellers now have so much stock on their hand that they’ve upgraded from Aerons to luxury Haller. As usual, arbitraged furniture works out to to the consumer’s advantage. As for Haller on LA, this auction’s not bad. Nice color, exposed bottom shelving (likely an expensive add-on for whoever ordered it custom), good size. What goes in that shelf? Magazines? The Metallion book? Gym equipment (like a jump rope)? Still, Haller on LA is an outlier, since pieces sell there at irregular intervals. The house selling this one, Wright, sold a similar Haller this year for $10,000; and a near-identical piece in yellow sold for $2,000 in 2020. There’s a non-zero chance here for a severe deal or a fleecing. Seller also has a Colombo chair (linked at the bottom), a Noguchi kitchen timer (badass), several Omersa items (they’re the stuffed safari animals that used to adorn Abercrombie stores in the 1950s; I had one and I freaked it), great Jeanneret chairs, a Chiclet sofa, Michael Boyd hitters. Great auction. $600
Song Weng Zhong for Roche Bobois Ava lucite chairs, Ill., in-house ship: What a chair, or on initial view, anyways; the designer, born in 1983 won a competition of sorts at Roche Bobois and is working for them, or did one piece; this one. Googling around he hasn’t done that much outside this, but he’s young, so it’s not exactly a Fran Liebowitz/Daniel Yergin situation. (Yergin is cool.) Scant Chinese modern on LiveAuctioneers, plenty of Chinese antiques. Zhong’s chairs themselves are loud and more forward looking than the Bellinis above, but are almost classic. They have the right lines, just enough flair and ugliness. How will history look on them? Will they go Starck or Bellini? The rest of the auction is full of dogshit, and includes a Pepsi machine. Super overpriced at $1,200. But I think truth might out here; this chair may last yet.
Wilkes Chiclet for Miller sofa, Chicago: Has the sun set on the Ray Wilkes Chiclet sofa for Herman Miller? Yeah, sure, I bet. I mean probably. The thing was even though it’s a perfect, perfectly designed item—harsh, fun, bubbly, stupid (as in obvious), direct—the couches, which could be found a decade ago for a song (like $75 if you looked) were, and a few years ago, running in the several thou category and being heavily featured in retail. The bubble came at the height of the pandemic… settees were selling in the 3-4 large range. Lately, though, almost none have hit auction—a handful in the past three years. This is likely because Herman Miller re-released these in May 2021. The retro was about as good as could be—accurate and close to the original, decent bordering on great colors, and a price—$3-4 large new—that sat exactly at the re-sell point and which totally cut out the middle manning. Genius move; should be a HBR case study about it, but there isn’t. Wilkes himself had other hits—his Rollback chair is a top 10 piece of office furniture—but none like this. Market correction at $250, may shake out as a severe deal, especially if the trend (which is not real) is over.
Quick Hits:
Carlo Nasson LT 338 floor lamp, Robbiate(?), NY, $3K (rich auction all around)
Colombo Elda chair in tan, Chicago, $4,000 (fair price)
Cardin clock with Paul Newman Daytona numbers, $100, Chicago (nuff said)
Studio Simon ‘Constantin’ occasional table, $100, Chi.(cute little wood piece)
Agnoli for Matteograssi Sistina 4 dining chairs, $125, NY (pictured; very good)
James Mont slipper chairs, $700, Chicago (tall, elegant, chintzy)
Barbie pink Baughmann lounge chairs, $2,000, Chicago (full camp)
Sottsass for Knoll sofa, Chicago, $300 (the best deal in America right now)
Platner style chrome rod small dining table, NJ, $500 (round, metal… hmm)
Barbaglia Duna lamp for PAF, $100, Redlands, Ca. (looks like Joe Colombo)
Snake Classifieds:
Truck DT sofa:
Truck is cool, they’re from Japan, their items are lived in but well-constructed. Here’s the product page—it retails $20K new. This one’s new but is selling well below that. Reply to this email and I’ll put you in touch.
Aalto 90A dining table and two 69 chairs—speak for themselves! the high point of Nordic design. Seller is asking $1,200 for table and $550 for chair pair, OBO. Reply to this email and I’ll put you in touch. Seller delivers!
Snake Classifieds: Where the elite meet to post photos of furniture but never feet.
Thanks for reading.
Snake