Snake Auction Observer 076: On very loud and super quiet furniture
Deals and all-timers on auction: Important (and rare) Danish leather, industrial Italian lamp, value couch buys, a lifetime investment dining table
This week: weather is nice out finally, I wore my parka over the weekend for the last time, I think, this year, it is well past cutting season, and if you are carrying any extra poundage around now that you want to lose you should either do the potato diet (DM me) or give up and lift more weight. There haven’t been too many auctions for good furniture listed over the weekend, but there were many listed last week. This week’s suite of auctions is heavy on investment pieces—the sort that are a deviation or two ahead of furniture trends now, and can keep you in good stead for a decade—as well as some deals. I would rate it a 7.3/10 auction week. As always, deeper thoughts are hidden. But first,
Housekeeping:
Had a really great discussion with Dan Nosowitz about the new spate of direct to consumer couches, and their poor quality, and some of this was quoted in his excellent, thorough story in Dwell. Thank you to all the new subscribers who’ve shown up from that piece. Dan’s arguments here can be expanded to other parts of the market. Things are of bad quality now because the economy has gotten away from itself.
Doing a BRACKET for March Madness. Click here to join Snake’s Tournament Observer—on ESPN. Winner gets a comped sub for a year and a mention in this newsletter, thus ensuring immortality. If the winner is a paying subscriber (I’m sure they will be), then IDK, the next year is free. If I win, I will donate an honorarium to a worthy cause decided on by the runner-up.
Rebels of the Neon God playing tonight at Metrograph. They didn’t even announce it! Probably the 9th best film ever made.
This NY Times article about the ripoff restaurant guy was great, I like that someone lent him $200,000 but only was able to reach him via email. Much to think about, bodes quite well for our relationships with newsletters. Would you lend someone who you have an email relationship with $200,000? What if they were 6’3? What if they wrote about furniture capably and with precision? What if they lived in New York? Would that seal the deal for you?
Will Oliver Bearman be the greatest driver of all time?
Auctions Observed:
Mourgue-style chrome class coffee table, Ct., ends Tues.: It’s the legs on this one, which is otherwise pedestrian; they’re shaped like clothes hangers but fat. They are the key to it all. Not a lot of open-edged glass coffee tables around—probably because they’re too sharp. Olivier Mourgue is excellent, he did the Bouloum chair (one of the best), which can be found for deals at auction and gets written up often here. This is a Mourgue-style table; I don’t know how close this table is to his work; and indeed, Olivier didn’t make tables, Pascal did (yes relation). Part of an auction full of second-tier modern stuff as can be expected from this house; lots of art books. $50
Crinion for Knoll side dining chairs, six, Ill.: Tues: An earlyish-looking set of Knoll pieces, these ones date to 1999, though, which is wild. They are close to Danish in many stylistic respects… the wood, the cloth, the simplicity… often not the case with later Knoll items. One of the nicer more anonymous set of chairs you can get. Plainness is never a bad idea for a set of dining chairs. Let the table and the chili fries do the talking… not everything has to be loud, nor must it speak up. Designed by Jonathan Crinion, who is a Briton who studied at Carleton University (in Ottawa Ontario)… and who is born in the 1950s… is completing, according to the Knoll website, his doctorate? Only someone who has lived in Ontario and been educated there can be so smart with their time. More concretely he’s really best known for the chairs. Part of a Jasper auction with more hodgepodge than usual. These don’t go for money. $1,400
Dan Johnson 30B chair, Van Nuys: Wed… design is nice, you can have loud chairs and quiet chairs, just like in life. This is one of the better and more immediate pieces of spiky accented furniture—the sharp, curving, romantic shapes one sees at Bruises Gallery and in some parts of Brazil. Looks much newer than the Crinions above, but this one’s from 1955! Once again, time doesn’t mean anything. It means nothing. When it comes to seating it does not exist. Johnson is a newsletter favorite and his work is rarely on auction. He designed a whole suite of furniture and has a fat body of work, most of which is less wild-ass than this thing. The 30B runs about $8-9,000 on auction (which is a DEAL; this is art). The house is selling two of these 30Bs in separate auctions, which might split the price down like a biblical child. Chair is at $5,000 now. The auction it’s part of has so many good and one-of-a-kind items that I will go into depth about a few of them:
After the jump: the best items from this auction, the most undervalued sofa on auction I’ve seen this year, a new wrinkle in archival Danish furniture (a kick-ass couch), a perfect Sottsass lamp, Breuer, dirt-cheap Cassina from a demigod designer, instruments of death, and even glassware from Ottawa, Ontario.
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