SNAKE LORE 003: Toshiyuki Kita
Prices, values and deep information on an under-appreciated and ignored Japanese furniture designer
Snake is a design intelligence newsletter…
Today, the third installment of LORE: a focus on one designer (or movement) including important pieces, rough market values, where to get newer repros, second-tier items, knock-offs, etc.
Housekeeping:
No F1 race today.
Shop closes Tuesday. Buy before Tuesday; after that I’m in Paris for 2 months and won’t ship until I’m back.
Ferrari has got to get it together.
Auctions ending this week at the bottom (some deals)
LORE 003
Toshiyuki Kita a furniture and product designer from Osaka with a lot of hits. He’s best known for the Wink chairs…
Kita was born in ‘42 in Osaka… lives and works there… a professor at the college over there. Best known for his furniture made by Cassina… a ton of stuff domestically in Japan, is a patent holder there and got an award from the Japanese patent office…
Kita’s not exactly a designer’s designer—smaller footprint than, say, Eames, and not lots of crossover to wider culture (movies?) or in news, but in the world of real furniture he’s very big and his work has a big footprint… in collections at MoMA, Pompidou and Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe in Hamburg. He was made a Commendatore by Italy, which people get as recognition for a lifetime of work. (Kita got his in 2017; I can’t find a log of other honorees from that year, except for the guy who ran the Cern reactor.)
I’ll break down Kita’s big pieces and some other hits below. To me his work is very Italian—companies he worked for, placed he had his exhibits—the items are poppy almost and exciting, but a bit restrained.Lots of Japanese influence, in the early lamps and with the Kick chair, though it’s in the other stuff too. Not many knockoffs, second tier items are mostly just… Cassina. So go the cliff’s notes; onto the key items.
Key items:
Wink chair: This is the one; developed in 1980 for Cassina, a recliner from tubular steel and polyurethane foam that’s flexible and can be moved around. Lots of colors, the most memorable are the “fun” color schemes, fun as in Brooks Brothers Fun shirt; avoid the new muted ones. Chair has the same tech as Vico Magistretti’s Veranda and Maralunga sofas (also Cassina). Probably called the Wink because you can have one of the Mickey Mouse ears up and one down.
One of the best stand-alone chairs from the past 50 years and the most underrepresented. It’s loud and immediate but doesn’t look lame or chintzy on repeat viewings. Because it’s strong? Because it’s so avant? Because no one has them? Maybe. Maybe because the glut of colors makes each iteration seems new.
About buying: Hard to find, rare domestically. Only a couple domestic on Chairish, none on 1stDibs. Like most Italian furniture, the good stuff’s in Europe. Retail, new, is I don’t know, maybe 6 large. Hard to tell from Cassina’s site. Models on 1stDibs and Pamono, which are older, ask anywhere between 2 large and 6. But all overseas, so probably $1,500 shipping. Some people ask less. Auction history is scant, domestic ones sell well under $1,000, but like, once a year. All recent. Deal under $1,000, steal under $500, and anywhere north of the first number and under $2,000 is fair. Over $2,000 you buy for yourself. Some Euros now and then have these at $1,200, so with shipping I bet you can get it around 3. Worth it even then if it’s loud.
Denq lamp: More modern, designed in 2011, draws (to me) from outside Japanese design tradition and within it. A pared down Picasso bull take on ‘60s and ‘70s pop art light bulbs. There are also to me, hints of the Pierre Cardin Narciso mirror, the one that’s shaped like a guy. Almost seems like a response to it.
About buying: retail on these is around $1,000; couple places in the city have them, including this store. Makes sense, it’s Oluce and it’s new. 1stDibs you can save a couple hundred bucks, they run around $900, and if you lowball the seller (you should) you can save more. None on LA. Pretty brilliant—hard to find things now that are mass produced and new that are both novel and very good… not clothes, not furniture, not pasteurized dairy… it’s not like I’m a retro person who only believes in buying and sitting on the old crap. It’s sad: if you could buy something new and great at the a store down the block, life would be simpler. But it’s not. Dr. Michael Burry when he figured out the subprime mortgage scam in 2005 or 6 said he was noticing “the rapid rise in the incidence and complexity of fraud” in the loans. I think the new fraud now by everybody else is selling new stuff that just is straight up not good. It’s not all banking sleight of hand. Lots of the fraud is buying a new sofa that is functionally worthless. Bad design, bad quality. I’m sure everyone in their gut deep down knows this is true. Anyways, this is not that.
Dodo chair: A muted and toned down Wink, with the same rough geometry but deper (spatially). A bit softer, a conservative five-legged base. There’s a switch at one side to kick out the footrest from. Someone made the nice design decision to make that switch thinner than every other part of the chair. “Here’s your switch,” he seems to be saying. Kita built this out in 2000, which fits in with the recliner era (America was doing very well then) and the post-styleless office furniture thing that went on most of the 1990s. Clinical but soft, but not really… this chair reminds me of the The Other People Place album… both pleasant and substantive, subtle muted late career accomplishments.
About buying: Harder to buy, harder to find, more recent date of production means fewer in the mix and collected. Less likely to show up on auction than the Wink. Retail is, again, hazy. Almost nowhere; can’t find anything. I don’t know why these items don’t have retail prices on them. Guessing between 3 and 5 large. Auction prices? Maybe a dozen have sold in the past five years. Some end in the hundreds, none ever sell for more than $1,800, and the ones that go near that are black or brown leather. They’re a little more regal.
Kick chair: On collection at MoMA, a very clinical, doctor’s office vibe here for this baby chair. Designed in 1983, presages the cold furniture that became popular a couple years later as people moved away from fun/warm Italian shapes. (Think of the set design in Dead Ringers, David Cronenberg’s documentary about Toronto.) What to say about the Kick? Probably the best small chair on wheels ever made, another Cassina classic. In an alternate universe this outpaces the Aalto stool. Best ones have wilder colors, though the colors don’t get as wild as the Wink.
About buying: Not many at retail; not on Cassina’s site. Most, even though they’re small, are on the continent. Try Pamono. Now and then one sells for cheap on LA domestically, like a couple hundred bucks. They’re on 1stDibs for about three times that. Deal under 250, fair price under 500, buy for yourself over that.
Odds and ends
I believe designers have hits—only the giants have more than a handful of items worth remembering—but don’t really believe in first and second tier design items, since so much work goes in and out of favor so quickly, and since, with Kita, so much of his work is hard to find. This makes this issue of Lore a bit more theoretical than the first couple. Hopefully someone batch imports some of these. That said, the items below have a smaller footprint and are harder to find than Kita’s above items.
Beo — a sort of modified Wink that looks like a chaise (from this view) but when flat is a daybed. Designed in 1985 for Interprofile out of Germany. Never see these in stores, on websites or on auctions; some in staid colors, some in colors. Pretty brilliant, one of the first (after the Centopiedi) modern and exciting takes on the Roman fainting couch. How good was the obese Futurama robot who just hung out on the fainting couch? I think his name was Alan. Was he built into the couch? Anyways, this should be a major piece of furniture, but it isn’t. Because… well, no good reason. These things are hard to find and weren’t really produced. That was the case with the Chiclet couch a decade ago, and that changed. I would buy this at any price if I saw it; auctions are rare, and end around $500, which is a steal; the few stores that have these (overseas) sell these for $3 large.
Vega — similar to the Beo, only slightly more Italian (shaped very much like a daybed), released in 1994 by a company called Francebed, from Japan. (FB sell lots of old people products.) See these even less, this one has a nice compact Mediterranean daybed look I remember from my grandmother’s apartment. She had this small roll-out one-person-width sofa with no ornamentation or serifs that was very comfortable. These are more louche and nasty. I’ve never been to Taiwan, but Taipei in movies looks a bit like a Mediterranean coast city. Must be the sun and the trees and the constant construction. I bet some of the same architects, too. These guys don’t only work in one city, or one continent. Like Kita. Lots of white stone in both places. The Vega does not exist to buy online to buy in any capacity—it’s just archived on TK’s website.
Aka, Biki, Canta chairs — close to the Dodo chair above…. in fact, they preceding it, all created between 1996 and 2000. Kita applies to his chairs the same naming principle that Morbid Angel applied to their discography… which is a mature artistic decision and a case here that these three chairs might be a major piece. Sure… who can say? Half French/half Italian smaller profile chairs on wheels, good for a dentist’s office. Canta (rightmost) has the quietest profile, Aka and Biki (left, center) are wilder. All by Cassina. It’s wild how hard some of Kita’s Cassina work is hard to find—so many other Cassina pieces are just about ever-present. Hard to say why? Maybe it’s perceived demand: Serious design literacy is not really there yet, and so posting this stuff to an IG or a store without a thoughtful Lichen-type caption and history lesson (s/o Ed and Jared) may just find crickets. But, also, the regular caveats that so much of the good Italian stuff that isn’t a Boby trolley just stays in Italy. Digging, though, I found some cheap models on 1stDibs, though, like this one for only $300 in an auction ending today. Not bad! I’d pay, all told, twice that and that would be fair. Under $400 for any of these would be a deal. Even a buy for oneself situation at $800. Chair prices, as we all know, are ambient, and depend on the person, their room and their needs. There was a New York Times story the other day about a pair of $20,000 Chrome Heart jeans. No reason why people shouldn’t spend five times that amount on a Cassina to hang those jeans on.
Kyo, Tako, Pao, Aoya lamps — series of paper lamps, though not formally, but just a bunch of lamps Kita did over the years. The Kyo, above, is from ‘71 and is I think Kita’s earliest work… the Tako’s from that year, too. The Pao is from ‘94—don’t confuse it with the HAY Pao lamp or the Matteo Thun (one of my favs) lamp of the same name—and the Aoya from 2005. A few won awards. These have more of a domestic footprint, lots are still in production and available from some of the above sites or from www.stilelife.jp, which seems to be a site run by Kita? Great body of work, made with washi paper (trad. Japanese paper made from mulberries, lasts, pervious to light) and which is pretty Japanese in its design but which also sits quite close to the Danish paper lanterns and all the ‘50s stuff that looks like this which came out of there and America. It’s neat because there’s an impulse to call these his most Japanese pieces… but they have as many international equivalents as any of the items above. All of them seem to be pretty available; retail’s not a bad option.
FX-888 soldering station: This soldering station is pretty cool. When I open my store (Snake The Store), we will sell this soldering station here and there between pieces of furniture and whatever else. Would people be interested in a store that sold avant garde furniture, soldering stations, clothes, Black Seed Oil, discontinued digital watches and possibly illegal dairy? Game worn jeans? . These irons are everywhere, on Amazon, etc. Exception to the whole “no good mass produced new stuff anymore” theory above, or an asterisk. One can’t live off soldering irons alone…
Mellina collection: A set of Vignelli for Heller-like dishes and cups in moulded plastic that Kita rolled out in 1979 for Kokusai-Kako. These don’t exist in these colors domestically in Japan; mostly show in local searches there as one-off items and in secondary colors, like peach, that are better than “app colors” but which aren’t as good as the bright red here. They don’t sell worldwide, either. Would be great if Snake The Store carried these. They’re just not available. Too bad, because they are brilliant.
That’s it. Hope the Kita Lore helps frame some of his great pieces and smaller pieces and hints at his massive body of work. Lots more info on his website, which is a great resource. I’m trying not to go heavy on the theory here, but I’ll keep saying it here and there, every other week: we are at a zygotic stage for design understanding. There is a never-ending well of good stuff out there. There are miles and miles of items that are major and beautiful and whose only crime is that they’re ignored in 2023. They might lack the context of, I don’t know, a Soriana, but during my research I ran across a news story where the writer called called Kita Maestro, as an honorific…. I think that works. Dozens, hundreds of Maestros that so few people know about… only those who have seen very little think they have seen it all…
Auctions ending this week:
Mario Botta Shotgun lamp for Artemide (1986), LA $600 (masterpiece)
Paulin for Ligne Roset Pumpkin sofa white/grey leather, LA $2,250
Zanuso leather settee, Chicago, $2,000 (his best seating by far)
Perriand 1950 bench from Marie Blanche hotel, Chicago $2400 (deal)
Thanks for reading.
Snake