Snake Launch Week, Essay 004: Why is it so hard to get real information about design?

Yesterday I made an announcement regarding the future of my newsletter:

An important announcement

Paid subscriptions will, in a week, be the only way to ensure you receive all future work.

Starting Monday free subscribers will receive Q&As biweekly, one auction email a month and one essay or brand profile a month. Paying subscribers will receive auction observers every week, brand profiles every month, essays once a month or so, and Q&As every other week. Posting classifieds will also remain free.

The terms are $8/month, or a yearly discount. To upgrade your subscription click this button:

I’ll be publishing one of the above features every day this week. If you don’t upgrade right away the best newsletter in the world will be going away. It’s that simple. Today is an essay. The topic is:

Why is it so hard to find out actual details on design?

I was looking the other day at an auction, for I think a set of lamps, and began researching a bit to see what had been written on them. They weren’t exactly super-duper canon, but were not outright obscure. The items in question were Rudi Stern’s tall, black and red lamps… the neon Torchieres… a regular, pretty perfect example of postmodern design produced in the late ‘70s or ‘80s. Stern, a New York operator, founded Let There Be Neon, a company whose name implies exactly that—they built out Studio 54, did a Time Magazine cover with the hammer and sickle on it—and designed furniture under LTBN as a sideline. The lamps and one triangular sconce; the sconce isn’t bad but isn’t as good as the lamp. It nearly does not work. I wanted to refresh myself on Stern and his work so I dug around, texted some people, leafed through some of my reference materials, a couple magazines, Googled around, hoping to find some writing, some detail, a fact or two, context. I didn’t find much. I found this:

Retail items, and the first link a story I wrote that mentioned the lamps a few years ago for GQ, after they were featured in Uncut Gems.

Cool. In the article I mentioned the lamps briefly, in passing. There is much to say about this lamp—it defines a character in a generational movie—but there is not much to read about it. The lamp sold decently, defined an aesthetic eras, or at least fleshed it out. It is great when you see it in person. It was one of the more expressive, restrained pieces to come out of post-modern ‘70s design, such as that style was, and because of its bonafides it fits in well with other styles—MCM, Italian, deco—because it’s at once austere and loud.

But no writing, no info. Stern’s work occupies the same space that a lot of well-designed furniture does. It is not exactly cult and is around in certain spheres. It’s an obvious item to design people. But it’s completely hidden. While it’s an inevitable item in design circles, someone who does not think about furniture or work on it might think it’s invisible. Even though it’s not that expensive—it auctions for $1,000, retails for double, less—it’s not that easy to find. And, more than that, hard to research. What’s the story with this thing? Can I find out about it? Not really. No long journalistic features; no deranged blog posts, no IG account of all of the lamps’ different color variations, no discussions about Stern out there. Maybe one of those things, hidden, maybe something that I missed. But not much of it.

Furniture is not underground, but it’s obscure

This is frustrating, but not surprising. It’s like this for just about every mid-famous piece of design. For a long while—since forever—there has been very little tangible information out there on design. None. For just about every piece of furniture south in popularity of an Eames chair, there’s no paper trail. Or if there is, it is thin. Almost nothing. Maybe a couple of grafs on AD, a passing reference in a general-interest publication. Maybe a viral social media post, or… gee whiz, a photo. But for the most part, what we mostly go off for design canon furniure are PR clippings, its company’s three-sentence bio—if we’re lucky enough for the item to still be in production—an old local news article, a vague social media post by some psycho, auction history, maybe a Wiki. But for the most part, the information environment is so barren no one even tries.

Why is this? Why is furniture so in the dark? It doesn’t make sense. These things aren’t obscure, and they’re not made in small numbers. Furniture requires real money to produce, and gets sent overseas in shipping containers; rich people have the good stuff in their home. It’s in movies. Other, more obscure aesthetics and artforms—records, fashion—get steno’d with aplomb. Sarcofago mentioned in a Pynchon novel:

I know more about them than my neighbor. But this lamp stays in the dark.

How it is

I’ve been thinking about why. It’s because furniture is without a grid. It’s mostly just items. There’s no governing principle, there is no accepted knowledge. There are no brand or designer hierarchies… there is no canon that is easy to find. Maybe there is… sure… maybe there is. But it’s basic and hidden. It comprises, at best, a handful of items and brands. (This is why everyone has the same furniture.) Knowledge-wise, nothing is out there. Some of the thousands of designers and brands making and who’ve made good furniture that doesn’t fit into these half dozen pieces are written about, here and there, along with their work. But barely, and not in depth. And the rest of them aren’t. And so readers—consumers—don’t even knows where to start. It’s a complete state of ignorance.

While the very basics of furniture—what is mid-modern, what is outré; why new furniture is expensive but bad—now and then get explained, it barely does, and not enough for the info to stick. And so is it a wonder why deep knowledge about furniture—what an aesthetic is… what is good… if it’s a consumer or producer market… how to outfit a house… what are the major pieces of the past half-century… or even half decade… —is hard to grasp? Or why the meaning of furniture—what design expresses… what it means… what it says about where we are now… how to explain all these gold rushes… —is completely hidden? Is it a surprise that people think there is no good furniture out there, and that everything that’s in stores costs a ton?

This is because furniture discourse at a high level is geared towards professionals. Because right now they’re the only people who have it.

Furniture is in the dark

I wrote before that furniture is in the dark, compared to fashion:

Why doesn't anybody have good furniture?

In the sense that the good stuff hasn’t trickled down to consumers. This is because the info that defines the field is professionally held, and not shared with consumers—much less professionals. What I mean is the people who know the most about furniture work in it. They use info—what a piece is, what it means, how to spot it, who likes it—to make money; not for other reasons. They have no incentive to share it. It’s a super new market.

Furniture is new

Furniture, as a hobby, is new. Among, you know, normal people, getting good stuff—obscure stuff. It is a recent phenomenon, dating back to maybe the pandemic. It is only since then that people who with good furniture and who know about it are not Furniture People—people who work in the field for a living or who define their lives by it. Five years ago the only people who knew about Sterns, more or less, were one of the following:

• Europeans

• intellectual peckerwood third-generation flea market dealers

• people whose personal lives revolved around design/furn

• people who worked in the field

• well-to-do urbanites who hired interior decorators

There were outliers, sure—David Bowie, Karl Lagerfeld, Jeremy Scott all had Memphis Milano collections—but these weren’t people with car payments. Mostly, furniture, like a Rudi Stern lamp, was a conspicuous good: an expensive, approved item, one with an imprimatur, “good furniture” for a certain sort of higher class. Lamps… and everything else would be sold only to the people who could afford to know about them. And other times they’d be sold to people with money. (Gems uses the Stern lamp to define Sandler’s character as this exact type of sucker consumer… or at least rich guy. In the film, he has lots of money, or did, and was a little behind when he got it, and so he designed his home with conspicuous, louche items, through a decorator, who conceded more or less to his bad taste.)

Which is why this knowledge was privately kept. These exchange of design items like a Stern lamp, and how much money they made was sequestered to a small part of the economy. Any monetary velocity was relegated to design professionals:

Lots of people were making good money off Sandler.

Recently things have changed. Furniture has become democratic—not in the moral or political sense (I’m not a weirdo; there’s nothing immediately political about furniture)—but in the sense that slightly more people know about it, and that it’s not a sequestered good. There are good stores in major cities and Instagram accounts with good taste that sell things… there are streams of professional writing that speak to this consumer… there is a very, very elementary understanding of design among people with lives… it has begun to get slightly… possible to find out about super dank things and to buy them. It’s a bit overwhelming, and it’s relegated to a narrow band of items, but it’s there. And so, in this Vaclav Havel context this lack of information about furniture feels so distressing. Are we out of the woods yet, or aren’t we? No one wants to get taken like Sandler and end up with a lamp from a decade ago; no one wants to be the butt of the joke. (This is prob. why people keep subconsciously buying the same boring stuff; a secret drive towards safety.)

But… the thing is… though there’s a vague sense of perception, and though we have become literate in many other fields—music, fashion…—…. furniture is still very brand new. As recently as three years ago there was less than nothing, no information out there, and to be sure, we’ve come far. And so it seems like the info should be available and good and plenty. But only the knowledge has begun to be democratic. The goods are still mostly being sold and distributed by Sandler-era pros. The new market is born, but has yet to mature.

In a mature market, like, say, vintage clothing, there is an ecosystem, and enough money moving around for there to be lots of roles. Sellers, buyers, curators, writers and editors, video people who love to explain, parasites, collectors, rich people parachuting in, brands—old ones resurrected, bad new repros, good new ones, diffusion lines, collaborators—and fans. It’s easy to picture these vintage archetypes if you’ve ever gone to a fancy flea market or a curated vintage store more than a couple of times. They’re easy targets—but they also make finding out about, and buying good vintage clothes pretty easy.

And so while furniture knowledge is becoming just a bit democratic, the market, for the most part, has not. It’s a closed sphere—no curators, not many writers or editors, not yet room for parasites, no peer dealers who sell mostly good things, not enough accessible brands. And so to buy furniture now still requires some nominal effort. To be sure, it’s a big market—used furniture was worth $30 billion in 2021—less barren than we think. But it’s still mostly peckerwood sellers, stores with maybe a couple good items, info closely kept. You need to know a bit about shipping, you need a price rolodex in your head. The structure that works decently enough for the professionals working within it; anyone new, though, needs a way in.

There is info out there if you look

Which explains the lack of extended info. Furniture is too new for explainers and a glut of Rudi Stern stories or public curation or anything more than a handful of good stores. It’s too new still for “peer dealers,”—sellers who know what pronouns are, who carry only good stuff on purpose, and stock cheap shit for young consumers—though there are, of course, a few of them. (Lichen’s a great example: they had good stuff, they had cheap stuff, they make their own stuff. They speak right at the consumer; they are pretty ideal.) A few people know this customer base exists, but most can do without it, since for a long time, the design world has made its profits by staying small.

So that sucks. But the design is out there, as is some knowledge, if hidden. It used to be completely held to professional circles; it mostly still is. Information about Stern’s lamps, and other semi-rare design items is out there, decentralized, shaggy, hidden, and appearing in different forms. It’s not really writing, but bare bones information. Here are some examples:

• nugget hidden in the 5,001st auction you see—A label, a store name, a screw detail; a year.

• Something—a detail, a designer, a whole way of thinking… about, say a designer or school in a book at a flea or a library which hasn’t been digitized or discussed or explained—what school Stern might have been involved with, who he worked with…

• An old mainstream news story at the time of release—maybe about someone else; any mention helps give context to how Stern’s work was used in a house, how his work was received

• An exponential burrow into the related on a Google image search, or on Google itself—this stuff really doesn’t jump out as a list item but doing it will get you something

• A decrepit web forum discussion—the only real web information that resists from the 2000s’ first decade

Stuff like that. It’s not rocket science, it just takes some time. Too much time to make money off, though, which is why the landscape is so barren.

So, what now?

So there is no information out there. So what? The furniture is. This feels like the story.

While it’s not super ideal to dig through a message board post to figure out what’s up with a certain era of Stern, the advantage is that the lamps are out there. They go up for auction sometimes. And because they do, they are cheap. (Auctions are the fissure in the furniture pricing system: the middle of the pack rich people don’t like buying things used.) These are the same auctions peer dealers use to stock up their storefronts; the same ones that replenish IG. It seems like a no-brainer choice. Buy it direct. It’s a gold rush.

How to find out about items on auction? Well, here, I would say. And how to find out about them? Also here. And while, as a reader, I concede that it would be cool to get info on Stern in a couple of minutes, at a number of different publications, that’s a few years away. More important than a glut of abstract information is the lamp in a room. Stern’s lamps are the shit, and if they’re ignored by, I don’t know, writers, and unremarked upon by, I don’t know, a curation account, well—all the better for the working consumer. All the better for you. Taken further, this applies to about every piece of so-called obscure furniture out there. They will, I promise, pop up on auction over the next year. Design is out there, it’s just not being written about, and real info on items can be tricky to find. But is that a problem? Or a big opportunity?

Thanks for reading. Upgrade to a paid subscription to receive posts like this in the future.

Sami Reiss