Snake Auction Observer 079: Buy the small stuff first—AKA why clocks and lamps are like designer handbags

Severe deals auctions: An Italian designer's never-before-seen bookcase, perfect lamps, value chairs

This week: the sun is shining, the air is nice and warm, it rained only for a little bit on Sunday, and so I delayed my calisthenics session until mid-afternoon, and afterwards gambled on curried goat (mucho bones; hard to get full) in fact the weather was so pleasant that even Henry St. (near Atlantic) was thronged with pedestrians, which was a first; there is a hot pot place on Third Avenue now in place of where the old M&M (I think that’s what its name was) was, on 11th, which serves two identical types of beef tripe on the menu, as well as cuttlefish (nice) but their broths center around monogastric animals; more tangentially to the letter there is an embarrassment of good furniture on the block ending this week, a half-dozen affordable chairs and sofas (prime canon under $800), a skid of beautiful and powerful lamps (including a demonic one and an angelic one), several perfectly executed Kartell items (a chair that rarely goes for cheap) and, frankly, Ettore Sottsas’ single best piece of work. Maybe? Plus, the best-ever (concept-wise, execution-wise) piece of retro furniture…. I would say this is an 8.8 auction week. Seriously good. No Housekeeping this week (though congratulations to reader Mike Harkin for winning the NCAA tourney—you will live on forever in glory)… I am trying a new thing where I make it all a little bit more narrative.

The Start With Smalls Philosophy of Getting Good Furniture.

I’d say about seven or eight years ago, when I was getting out of the vintage clothing re-selling game, and focusing more on my day job (I sat next to Omar Minaya), I still had the itch and was buying crap for my apartment and trying to get it all in there in the quickest possible way. I didn’t want to buy garbage, or even get something and replace over the next couple years, but after some time being very patient with furniture, trickling in, slowly, I began to get hot under the collar and wanted to get it all finished. I had begun to slowly upgrade immediate items, and noticed a lot more areas in which things coule improve. I got a sofa easily and right away, and that lasted, as did my coffee table (still have it), and had a bed and a bench and all sorts of key items, but what troubled me, two years into the slow, slow accumulation was that even as the big stuff came in there I’d see, when I strained, big holes… with what I had… which soon appeared everywhere. Behind the pored-over, thought-about pieces, the big ones that filled up a room, were also-ran items that… weren’t so much upsetting, but had no real easy canon solution. It was easy to leaf through the design books at The Strand and find a half-dozen interesting sofas, tables, lamps… but it was harder to find a good clock. What about good stuff for the kitchen? Did anyone make a good clock? I got to thinking about this a couple years in. Most of the clocks that were above competent were everywhere. What about stuff for the kitchen that didn’t cost an arm and a leg? Imagine a pepper mill you could believe in…

It wasn’t as materialistic as it sounds. This cropped up over years. But it shows the importance of smalls to a place. Things like clocks, low-grade lamps, crap for the kitchen (bowls, tongs, cutting boards, cruet sets)… there’s a lot of stuff, sure… but it’s also a positive thing, I think…. even if you don’t really sweat furniture hard it both feels like a problem and an opportunity. A problem since the stuff is a bit hard to find; it’s not gridded out anywhere, it’s an example of complete market failure. Name a dozen actually good pepper mills… nope… that’s a week’s worth of work. It was difficult to find information on these things. Even a clock—the ones in the vintage world and which sold on auctions when I was buying were too OG flea market vibe: the Felix the Cat-looking one, with the eyes, big Rolex ones (that they have in dealerships, or on the wall in movies about the stock market), or, now and then, something promotional. They’re great but it doesn’t work out at scale.

It’s not even any work whatsoever with smalls. Buying a lamp or a timepiece… was actually like buying a T-shirt. It just showed up in the mail. It wasn’t hard; no one had to drive it up in a van. I would say it’s thought of as furniture… since it is a thing for the house, and not something one wears. It requires a sort of permanence… no sane person buys a new clock every month. But the argument here I would say is… why not? We probably shouldn’t know what time it is all the time (bad for the soul), but it would be nice to have a considered or just good-looking clock on the wall or in every room of one’s hut.

Speaking more broadly… design, lately, has been spreading out but it it still at a very, very early stage. It hasn’t taken on everywhere. And it’s not very deep. And so the future of design as a democratic instrument—think… not dogshit furniture in most stores; people having nice stuff in their houses, different aesthetics, more young designers—is very much now unwritten… and could shake out in many ways. One path I see us all going down shakes out as a situation in which people have good clocks and lamps, cutlery, kitchen stuff—good smalls—and make do with more pedestrian or retail seating and storage options. (At least while they’re renting.) For auctions, it’s a bit easier: Houses can ship these items themselves most of the time… and retail-wise there are also some immediate solutions. Stores, like Ssense, that are not immediately known for their homegoods have some (they got Ginori bowls, for example, at a good price), are an option. As is not thinking twice and just buying one of the many good Sowden lamps off the MoMA store. Getting good clocks, cutlery sets… to me it seems a realistic way of things shaking out, one close to how fashion more or less funds itself, a market in which most consumers tend to buy fast or off the rack fashion and limit their splurges to accessories, fragrances, eyewear…. You don’t have to try on a bag before buying one; you don’t have to measure your door for a lamp or a clock.

As for me, I ended up finding, not in a book but on eBay, in a search for some Memphis-related arcana, a decent which led me to a few others. I sold off the rest. I bought it for like $45, put a couple batteries into the back of it sat it on one of my Bobys next to a Home Depot chicken lamp and a print that I got for my birthday from my friend, Nick.

The clock on auction—Shohei Mihara designed it for Wakita in the 1980s, it’s produced with NEOS markings, a company that also made ones by Sowden; Mihara’s smaller clocks are the best ones he made, the big round actual clocks tend to rely on colors like yellow and pink together (banana gum) which are too much of an of-the-time snapshot… and the other ones that are darker are still a bit too simple. This one is just… direct, fun… on the nose. There aren’t many like it. There’s an Alessi alarm clock (red and grey) that’s similar but not as good. Flat shipping, in New York; part of a strong auction, $150

As far as kitchen stuff goes, you can’t do better than Sottsass for Alessi, this salt/pepper mill, in NYC… is gutter. A couple arguments for getting this here, one is that if you keep your salt or pepper in a plastic shaker (like from the store, that the salt comes in) then that is unhealthy. I don’t want to make scares. It just is the sad truth. I am not against ABS plastic—that’s what storage items should be made of. I’ll just mention here that Sottsass’ kitchen work tended to be made of other materials. $220, flat shipping; almost never lists, from ‘89, retails for cheap, but better (IMO) to pay the vintage tax and get something qua unique.

• As well: this cruet set by Sottsass, same house (a cruet set is salt and pepper, plus oil and vinegar) but a more pedestrian (or dare I say avant-garde?) design… at half the price. I have yet to see a real cruet set at someone’s house, but New York isn’t much of a hosting city. I hope to see one too. $100

I’m giving away the above; more really good smalls below, as well as a Cheap Seating Roundup and tens of high-tier canon buy it for life design items (including a bookcase that I believe is the best to ever come out of Italy) from a very enriching week of auctions all get context and prices after the jump.