Snake Auction Observer 065: Clocks, late Thonet, Roche Bobois, Bette Midler's entire collection on auction; the best modular shelving and more

Plus: Japanese adjacencies to Memphis, cheap crap in LA,

This week, much in the way of Japanese Memphis-adjacent lighting and seating, a minimal early modern Italian table, and, a very rare king size designer bed (in New York, for dirt cheap, $300…).

Paying subscribers get a link to the best modular shelving there is (up there with Vitsoe), a Pesce chair head to head with all his work, as well as affordable French silverware a rumination on the difficulty of finding good clocks—hard as crap, harder than furniture.

Many items ending Wednesday; here’s how to buy something on LiveAuctioneers. Register right away if you wish to buy.

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Observations on Auctions:

Wagner stools for Thonet, Chicago, ends Wed.: I write this newsletter not out of a creative impulse—non-fiction, come on—but in the sweet spot of service for the widest possible audience of readers and me making a little bit of money, enough, in fact, to get by and choose freelance projects I like. Has this happened? More or less. But in December and in fact, since Thanksgiving, freelance shuts down until January. And thus I am still working, but mostly on this newsletter. And so I ask you’re rocking with this newsletter for free—thanks for reading—and want more writing, full archive access, more information on vintage furniture and thoughts on these matters, for yourself, or as a gift, now is a good time of the year for everyone:

One of the things I try and get across in this letter is to put forward an aesthetic—or an access to an aesthetic, or a possibility of several ones—a bit apart from whatever is going on now. By that I mean a peek at the gamut of objectively good furniture, which as I often write is endless, and, as such, many times includes items that are not outright discussed, things hidden in plain sight, more names and designers than anyone can truly and organically ingest… good shit. As such, not all, indeed few of, the items linked here as auctions are affordable or even presented here as worth buying… it is rather that they are worth looking at and considering, and it is only through auctions that the widest and deepest selection of good furniture presents itself. Nothing is close—not the press, not Craigslist, not IG, nothing. So that’s that.

As for this one… a bit of a mind-blower, a surprising item… for several reasons. One is its timeline—Thonet made their bones over a century ago… the 14 chair is older than Canada—and so these stools’ date of production is at first surprising… doesn’t this look very much like an early 1960s design? (That’s the date on the auction.) It might. Esp. with the lattice legs and the dimensions that predate exciting Kartell work that came a decade later. And yet they’re designed in 1904, ‘06 or around then. Really good. Many mediums are timeless, fiction especially, but there is something about design when an item like this that is just so ancient exists beyond time. This would not be out of place anywhere; this could be newly drawn up today. Anyways, appropriate price on these—$3,500—as they run in the 10 large range when produced by Gebruder Thonet. The house, Wright, in Chicago, is about the most dependable one on LA. Lots more from this auction featured in the rest of this newsletter.

Randy Shigeru Uchida ‘Dear Morris’ clock for Acerbis, Chicago, ends Wed.: Clocks be like… clocks are very difficult to source and find… there are not many clocks with a point of view available vintage or resale, or, indeed, in retail. And, as people know very little about design and furniture to begin with, and since clocks are not as forward in design press—or, indeed, in real life—when was the last time you noticed a clock—they remain undefined and vague as a class. Uchida did lots of those crepe lamps and a perfect rattan chair—1974, breathtaking—and this one is deeply Memphis adjacent; it also resembles, very slightly, Shohei Mihara’s clocks, which are more accessible and have the same Michael Graves/Saved By The Bell aesthetic. Made for Morphos, part of Acerbis, in ‘89… it speaks for itself and the only difficult thing about it is where to place it—it’s 4’4 tall. These auction for $1,000, though not in a while. Another week, another item on LA that is simply not anywhere else. Not on social media, not in a magazine, not in anyone’s house… only on LA, and, down the line, in this newsletter. It goes on forever. $1,000

Umeda Getsuen chair for Edra, Chicago, ends Wed.: One of the Memphis-adjacent pieces that overcompensates for its avant garde difficulty and veers right into beautiful ornate celebratoriness… and, which, to me, wears out its welcome real quick. This is a hotel lobby chair… and to me is not entirely competent. But I ask—does it matter? Are we being too harsh on these too on the nose items? Why be so critical? Is the Ultrafragola mirror that bad, or did we just not… get it in time? Or this? Or the Togo? I think what is frightening about these sorts of items is that there are no rules, and there is a non-zero chance that the avant archival items we