Snake Auction Observer 055—the best shelves ever made, perfect Kartell, Scarpa, cheap Eames and more

Sofas, lamps, chairs, more lamps, and several freaks selling Togos

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Housekeeping:

• Ferrari: Almost.

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Auctions:

Bellini Camaleonda club chairs, NYC, ends today: A popular chair of a sofa, the Camaleonda, designed by Mario Bellini around ‘72, around the time of this clutch exhibit at MoMA. (Decent stuff on the archive site.) MB did the Chiara lamp (perfect), the Bambole sofa… the Camas are a little less poppy and more luxe than other Italian designs of the era, fit in closer to French work—it’s the tufts and the simple lines. The chairs look almost like club chairs—do they have those in Italy? Prices are high on these—a set of two sold for $7,000 this year, and couches are in the five-figure range. Auction is full of mid-modern hits—Knoll Platner chair, a great Herman Miller table, a hairpin Nelson, Brno chairs, a Picasso vase with an owl on it and a half-dozen Geoffrey Beene mannequins (???). $2,000

Alessi Scandi teakettle, Fl., ends today: The 9091 teakettle by Alessi, from 1983… by Richard Sapper… one of his better designs… super subtle. Wild how subtle it is. It’s in the shape of a teakettle:

Sapper’s is what tea kettles look like. But there are details here: it plays two different notes as the water boils (pan flute?) and the brass spout in a different color and looks like a gun. (To me anyways; the design is more likely in reference to a reeded instrument.) But how different can a kettle really be? Sapper also designed the Tizio lamp, and the premise with the 9091 and the Tizio and much of his work is veeery slight obfuscation. Cheap, at $50; others run around $100. House has hits, including a:

• Milan cappuccino set by Matteo Thun for Illy (charming)

• A pair of Koch & Lowy chrome floorlamps (deeply cheap and tasteful)