Snake Auction Observer 081: I found the best chair ever made. It is from 1935

It has never been posted or written about before (outside of wherever its designer was from)

Finally Spring in New York, though it was more or less that the past two weeks anyways, I lifted in Flatbush over the weekend, well, I did calisthenics, and after that I housed a pound of curried beef (oxtail and goat over beef, but less ideal post-workout or if you’re really hungry because of the bones) and then sat with a Simenon in Prospect Park, which looked that day like a Seurat painting except without a wacker selection of dogs. Saturday, the day before, brought with it the New York Art Book Fair—at which Shining Life tabled. Not many novels at the fiar. I once picked up an old double issue of Slayer from the Boo Hooray booth though, back in Queens. This week, a nice comportment of auctions, storage and seating, plating, fine China and lighting, I would rate the week’s work at around 7 out of 10, there is slatted furniture in there, too (several kinds) and a grip of great items in Europe, which on a design level cannot be beat, and, as well, what I can confidently say is

The best chair ever made

Which slots in as maybe a desk chair, maybe a dining chair, not a lounger, a pretty regular, good-looking chair. It’s from the 1930s. It is an ass-beater. I found it combing through the 1,500 or so items I look through every week. It’s not especially obscure but it’s not especially prominent. It is the qua chair—there are 1,000,000 chairs, and it is one of them. On the Throwing Fits podcast the other week, not the Brandon episode (a little bit about that down the line), they mentioned (correctly) that Substack writers come off pretty high on themselves. I hope I don’t. I’m just a regular guy from Ottawa, Ontario who finds furniture for readers for a living. I just think this chair is the best because… well, it is up there aesthetically to me. I honestly have never, not once, seen or heard or read anything about it. Feels good. It’s down towards the middle of the newsletter. But first:

Housekeeping:

• Thoughtful Snake mention the other week on the Brandon Mahler (friend, subscriber, 281 area code phone number and multiple Bulldoze-shirt owner) episode of Throwing Fits, as mentioned above in my ambulatory discussion/tease regarding the best chair ever made.

• This news item ahead of the Miami race: Ferrari is debuting a blue car needs to be judged, as a poll:

• No news peg but I have to mention this here: eBay’s watchlist limit of 400 items is an embarrassment and must change.

• Nice work by McGill students taking a stand on principles and calling for divestment from incursions into Gaza. As I write this, New York City’s vegan police officer mayor is throwing the hammer down against brave and principled Columbia U. students in the name of willful ignorance.

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Auctions Observed:

Haller side table, N.C.: Ends Thurs… Haller has elevated itself this year to past debate: automatic, not offensive, clean. On auction it’s even more of a deal; a couple pieces used to sell annually, if that, now they hit the block every month. But…. no side tables. This is the first one for sale in a decade. A small piece such as this I think works even better than a big Haller, since it can work as an accent. It is dominant enough to make a statement next to a any of a dozen different aesthetic styles; my dream, if I had the room—I might get rid of my bed to do this—is to have a nice black Haller such as this (or maybe warplane silver) next to a Louis XIV chair. On the chair hangs a Bulldoze tee… House has many items to be addressed below, a Peter Max flag (USA), a pair of really great Stoppino stools, the Cecchi chair that looks like the Elda, and, frankly, lots of really fascinating newer work. Really, really good auction. $400

Stacy Dukes Efebo chairs for Artemide, N.C.: Chairs go on forever. There is an overwhelming amount, so many of them that they cannot be counted. Among design freaks (or workers) this variety acts as a carrot: it is something to dig into, and the oddities within it (like the best chair of all time, which is further down this newsletter, below the jump) are items to chase after and accumulate, not necessarily as an ammassment, but as a purposeful act over time. It functions well. This is why people have hobbies. It makes life better. For those on the outside, people who might not be as deep in furniture, this same reality can feel overwhelming. There is so much design that it’s hard to get one’s head around it… or at least know what to buy first. This isn’t a philosophical problem. It’s an actual problem. How to find context around these items—where does a thing stand in relation to, let’s say, Eames?

This is actually the truth

This is not so much paralysis but… a quick freeze. Context is important, it helps explain fascinating chairs like the one above from mistakes. But you don’t always need a philosophy. You can get by with just shortcuts. One shortcut I take is to buy anything made by Artemide that I remotely like when I see it. (This is because Artemide is Italian.) That’s the hack. The truth is, though, you only need to like a piece at a time… the one you are buying that day. And the real context is what’s going on in your hut.

Designed by Stacy Dukes (incredible name), who appears to have done nothing else. Jury is out on whether this thing is for kids or not, it’s about 1’ tall; there’s the Efebino too, as far as I can tell they are interchangeable, the names show up on auctions with no real discernment and with identical items. Though… most of the chairs are a few inches taller than this exact one, which is why it may be so cheap. Prices are all over the place, low hundreds to low thou… which makes this, today, right now, the under-the0wire Snake Lock of April at $50

Below the jump: a half dozen chairs and tables, and what I believe to be the best chair ever made. If you don’t want to pay that’s fine, there are definitely 1,100 or so perfect other chairs in the universe. But it’s worth it to know.