Snake Auction Observer 052
Expressive beds; italian sofa, lamps; Baughman-style and a Perriand lamp for health
Snake is a reader-supported newsletter covering good furniture, undervalued, or eternal. Many auctions this week.
Housekeeping:
The full video of my book Q&A, with Sam Schube, from a couple weeks ago at Varsity Los Angeles, is online on the Advanced Perspective YouTube:
Q&A starts around the 13 minute mark. It contains the best set of questions I’ve been asked about the book and is a good way to find out about what Sheer Drift was about. Also, deft camerawork by Marco. Thank you again to all involved.
Ferrari: simply put they need to get it together. Will they?
Auctions:
Magistretti Maralunga for Cassina settee, CT, in-house shipping: A trending sofa a few years ago, now overlooked; also a piece that makes the argument that designer Vico Magistretti is a sofa guy above all else. (An architect, he’s done lamps and tables… but his seating is his most direct work.) This Maralunga is of duller color than the overpriced ones that litter ecom sites—best reason to trawl 1stDibs and Pamono is to look at the wild Euro renditions…
I wonder why the door that opened, with furniture, a couple years ago, towards uglier/avant/post-MCM stuff didn’t settle on classic Italian. (This one’s from 1973.) Tastes have skidded past semi-bulbous and contained and wild to each of those things, but separate; not together. Only the Italians know how to touch all corners at once. As automatic a couch as there is, maybe the platonic ideal, even past trend; these never sell for money domestically; none this year has hit 1 large. House has a Togo, a Dutch leather sofa that looks like a Togo, a De Sede knockoff with a dozen seats for $50, Abo Randers, a near-perfect Stilnovo lamp in Hamas green, Breuer B33 chairs (perfect), teak, and underwater camera housing. $650
Perriand for Phillips infrared lamps, CT, IHS: The overlap between health and design, both my journalistic beats, I think is very broad but I also try not to make a big deal about it since if you think about any two things long enough you can connect them. Maybe the connection is both are about improvement: a nicer couch, better posture, less pain, no pasteurization. And, to a lesser extent, more free time and a brighter future. But these connections are how I see it; they are not as evident as this—lamps designed by Perriand for Phillips in the late 1940s or early ‘50s… right before her Mexico bookcase (a hit; overlooked)… meant to heal muscle pain. (Red light does this.) New to me, which is nice: There’s something underground, or obscure about a product made by a massive company (Ajax jersey) that is decades old and completely new. Hidden in plain sight, sure… but it’s still a jolt. At $80, these are cheaper than the price history on this lamp ($375 a bit ago, double that years ago) and more affordable than any infrared light solution I’ve come across that isn’t the Dr. Ray Peat workaround of a red lightbulb from Home Depot and chicken lamp. DM for details on that one; I don’t purport to understand Dr. Peat, but I have a vague idea. Same auctioneer as above.
Perriand for Les Arcs leather diners, Florida: More CP; and why not? These chairs, which end exactly 1 hour after the Philips lamps, are a more accurate representation of Perriand’s work… they are more somber, elegant, reined in… and use nicer materials. Still, a big difference between these chairs and many of her other designs—Les Arcs stools, the chaise loungers—which are on one end earthier and on the other outré. I suppose… I feel Perriand has a lot of variance between her designs. What connects the LC2 chair… the Les Arcs stool… her unfortunate double chaise lounges? There are connections between these, but not strong ones. These chairs, designed in ‘68, look more like the field, and other people’s work, but rise above them: better materials and detail. The lively lived-in leather and the distinct loops that connect the seat to the frame… what is design besides the race for smaller, finer detail? Not sure. Pairs sell for $600, $900; one goes for double that if it’s early. This auction features crucifixes, statues of people wrestling, marble busts, fencing masks, petanque equipment—the good stuff—and a few suboptimal pieces of furniture. $400
Pair Frattini Megaron lamps for Artemide, Calif.: Not many tall very minimal lamps these days which is unfortunate. As furniture and design literacy has ticks up, the works being bandied about veer to the expressive and the stark—all white, all grey places—but rich work. Minimal pieces like this that are stark but not rich, and not expressive have been left in the cold. What’s worth noting is the qualities that make this lamp succeed—primitively simple; thin, like 111 57th St.—are hinted at by other lamps, like the Tolomeo, but not as well. This works because it’s not flattened out but thinned out. Giancarlo Frattini’s other lamps—the Abele, the one that looks like a worm, the Caltha, the Noa are all worth mentioning. All are good. Some days I like the Megaron most; some days I do not. These sell for nothing, as low as $50 for a pair. The point, I think, is one can own one Frattini lamp, sell it, get another. Why pick? Furniture can be liquid, since there’s so much that’s good. House has handsome Pearsall seating and a nice credenza of his with some crap on it, McCobb shovel chairs, a Salvador Dali menorah (damn), this table (very good), lots of teak. $300
Two chrome benches, CT, IHS: From the same house selling the Maralunga above, but later in the week (nothing else good save a Geiger counter). Fascinating bench; I’ve been writing about chrome benches for a long time:
and have one, the Baughman, in my apartment. The more we find out about metal benches and their pricing vagaries the less we know. These two are only in the style of Baughman. While not real, they nonetheless stand on their own. The dense lines work, the design is simpler, more tame than the Nelson… I wrote an essay last week about the furniture in people’s homes…
and didn’t hammer the point that fakes are disappointing now because they are replicas, whereas in the past they were tributes. Like this. Clearly a Baughman rip, clearly different. Pieces like this aren’t a shortcut to interior design, but help. Who made this? Well… Not everything needs to be designer; not everything needs a story, and not everything needs to look like something specific… everything should either look like something, do a job or look good. $160.
Massoni for Poltrona Frau bed with radio, LA: Reportedly a Luigi Massoni bed, but I don’t know: faux fur trim, Wolfgang Hoffman-esque drawers and a radio that’s built in… a series of correct decisions, but not a series of decisions that Massoni might make. His other beds for Poltrona Frau: The Losange is his best—look it up, nice and simple—the Lullaby Due is too much:
But it’s good to overshoot.
The bed in the auction is built for a full size mattress, so this is not just fake but theoretical. Just about every archival designer bed—real—is too small. Only a few come in queen; never in king, built for smaller people with lower caloric expenditures or people who lived in smaller apartments. Designer beds show up rarely on LA and other marketplaces and so they are almost always novel at first. This makes them a bit tougher to consider as longer-term buys. How to think objectively, soberly, with perspective about an expressive bed? Every one grabs you… not every one is good. Does this lead to compromise (which in turmoil, brings controversy)? Hard to say. Maybe we, I look at expressive bedroom furniture like people with Crate&Barrel in their crib look at the rest of the stuff here. Like at a dinner party: “Can you believe Kevin and Melinda’s batshit orange sofa? Are they OK?” One might also say an expressive bed creates the difficult precedent of the rest of the room needing to be as good, or at conversant, with the loud bed. But that is negative thinking. In reality, Loewy, Sottsass, Ceroli beds pop up every couple of years. $150; Auction isn’t any good, but does have an old Chinese jade comb ($300; worth double that).
Quick Hits:
Richard Sapper Alessi Nespresso machine, Ct, $70, IHS (who knew)
Silver Componibili without the crap on the bottom, $50, Fl. (wild color; new to me)
Eames Hermès green soft pad exec. chair, $190, Ct., IHS (foolproof)
Brazzoli for Guzzini-style (unsigned) plastic red lamp, Ct., $50, IHS (pictured)
Ilse Mobler wood coffee table, Ct., $50, IHS (never seen one like this)
Chinese jade comb | Chinese jade opium pipe LA; $300x2 (I don’t know what the second thing is)
Ralph Lauren Fulton light fixture, LA, $300 (really, really good)
Thanks for reading.
Snake