Snake Auction Observer 058—French seating, Magistretti, avant-garde Kartell, designed barstools, the best couch I have seen in weeks

Plus a Kubus sofa, mucho Hoffmann and the one difficult piece of Roche Bobois design

Snake is a weekly reader-supported design newsletter, covering severe deals and spreading knowledge. For a representative sample, click here for the most recent auction breakdown, and here for the most recent designer rundown.

Housekeeping:

• I saw Michael Mann’s Ferrari movie (Ferrari) on Friday. Felt like a minor work on par with Public Enemies, and not so much, say, The Insider. Because Mann is a master, I’m ready to revisit this opinion, though, and will give my verdict on whether Ferrari, as a film, has it together, in 7 months, when I rewatch it.

• No Scorsese movie spoilers either please, as I am not seeing it immediately. I read the book, through, and had a nice conversation with David Grann about Harley Flanagan.

• I wrote earlier about doing fitness and strength writing occasionally in this newsletter. Would you want it in this newsletter?

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Auctions:

French modernist Maxime Old chairs, Ca., flat ship: I’ve stated in this newsletter before that the best thing—the best deal—in the world, in design, is era-specific knockoff furniture. That is to say something made well that looks very good but which is not necessarily designed by a big name with work in the permanent collection at MoMA… Several reasons why:

• Things were made better back then, even the cheap crap (and, indeed, lots of mid-modern design back then was sold as affordable to young families).

• It was harder to produce furniture and so just about everyone who got something out the door had more of a formal grounding (this is also the case with movies; The Last Boy Scout is a more competently executed film than all but a handful from this decade).

• And I bet the wood and the glue were both of better quality back then.

Speaking more specifically, this chair is in the style of work by Maxime Old, a giant, from France—whose work is key in understanding the sober, restrained design that’s come out of there over the past 60 years… sort of how like Danish crap predates Eames—though, frankly, I like the boot in the auction more than a lot of Old’s chairs:

But what can you do? Runs $1,700: not cheap for a nothing designer, but fair for six well-constructed chairs. House has a beautiful Josef Inwald vase, a slick Fase Magro lamp (improvement of a very common shape), Mategot chairs which have no equal and more along those lines.

Three Corbusier LC2 chairs, Cassina retro, $50: On the other side regarding reproductions—current productions… licensed productions—of canonized designers’ work, many can lag well behind a good fake from the era. Time is the enemy. The Le Corbusier furniture being sold new right now is just… not all the way there. I sat on some of these chairs (parties, shopping) and the leather’s not that supple. It feels like the angles are off, like the metal bars are newer. But I have a reverse recency bias with commercial items and cannot trust my judgment. On the flip side, real originals—this one is, I don’t know, 100 years old?—aren’t real. Few can afford them. In the middle lies salvation: later, but still old, reproductions. These Cassina LC2s I’ve written about before (often), but they are so important: they hold a perfect set of dimensions, and speak, with their slightly overstuffed cushions, to rounder, exciting post-60s pieces from well after its OG design. They also speak to the good bootleg crap I highlighted above; similar value proposition. Worth $1,000 each, tops. Part of a great auction that includes these PK22 Poul Kjaerholm chairs (his best work, IMO; $100) and a couple items detailed below. $50 (yes, that’s right. $50 for three chairs.)

Hans Hopfer Virgule chair, ottoman for Roche Bobois, NC: This is a new designer to me—design is a never-ending well; I mentioned Hopfer once in an Observer over a year ago, but only in passing—and would say I wish I knew about him earlier… but what’s the rush? There’s an infinite supply, and many several more things more important than having good furniture in one’s home (where you pay to live; if you have bad furniture in your house you are lighting your life on fire). Horn of plenty. About Hopfer: we know him a little bit: he designed the all-time