Snake Lore 007: Cini Boeri

The Italian architect's best chairs, lamps, buildings, plus a new hat for paying subscribers

Happy Sunday—Snake is a design intelligence newsletter. Below is the latest Lore, which is a deep dive into a designer or brand’s history, with pricing and relevant items.

Focus today is on Cini Boeri, the Italian designer (1924-2020), explaining her in rough context, breaking down her important pieces, with market values, where to get newer items, second-tier items, knock-offs... and making sense of her other pieces. Included is a price value system—deal, steal, and “fair” pricing, i.e. in a rush timeframe or for a loved one—so you know what to pay. Older Lores are here, but first:

Housekeeping:

• I just made a new hat. Here it is:

  

  Paying subscribers get first dibs. If it sells out, it sells out. Link/info will be at the bottom of the post below the $ wall. Thanks for supporting independent journalism.

• The Super Bowl be like…

• Tasty Hand Pulled Noodle has gone downhill. It is packed with tourists now, which does not necessarily mean anything. But the noodles now have grit. Maybe it was an off-day? I don’t think it was. It’s over.

• The new Red Bull livery looks half good…

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LORE 007

Cini Boeri was a big dick Italian designer who began working in the ‘50s and went at it until the end. She grew up in and was educated in Milan—at Polimi, degree in architecture in 1951, one of three women to graduate that year—and worked there. Did buildings and smaller-sized commissions…

Casa Bunker above… unbelievable. Architectural work and education sometimes explains the sort of sloughed-off nature of smaller commissions by these designers; it is one of those perceptions that is hard to disprove. I have it in my head, for example, that the difficulty and logistics of architectural commissions (and the punishment that this education prob. was in the 40s and 50s) makes anything at a smaller scale seem like child’s play. I don’t know, you don’t need to know wiring schematics to build a sofa. Undisprovable, sure, tho I sense this with Boeri, though with her, her building commissions are very… almost guttural. Nothing this harsh can be thought of and spun over and over in someone’s head for so long… it’s a quick reaction. Boeri’s building commissions:

• The Casa Bunker above

• This thing (unreal)

• This villa

Simple, overpowering, crushing. I don’t have the ego to think I can explain this. Structurally, though, I remember Gaetano Pesce saying in an interview somewhere that the futurist designers in Italy of the 50s-70s were more or less artists, and were doing this work because of material conditions following the second world war… maybe this is the confidence here.

Boeri’s design work feels more… direct and crushing than much of what was coming out at the time. Sharp, hard angles, very forward-facing… but not necessarily harsh. And not… whatever the other direction is. Feels like Arnold Schwarzenegger doing a push-up. Who’s to say how it happened? To quote Stanley Kubrick, I don’t know, Michael, how does anyone ever think of anything? Below—her works.

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Key Items

Strips Daybed: In many senses this Lore is an excuse to use the above photo, which is prob. the most beautiful staging on LA in some time. The strips… there is a sofa as well. To me it’s her most major piece, because it has… almost no competitors outright: not in the design world, anyways. In that is is completely hers. (Think of the Boby; there’s really only the Boby.) On one level it’s not right there is no raft of choices for sofas or pieces of furniture like this: casual, simple daybeds… There is the Centiopedi… but who has that? This one is even more minimal… it is on the other side of the Maginot line, so to speak. These were hecho en Europe; by Arflex, in 1972, in the midst of Boeri’s most fruitful period. Many colors and shapes—chairs, settees, sofas (two-levels)… Effectively not available to North Americans via auction, it’s a steal below €400 deal at €720 or below, and for yourself above that; one on Chairish for double that, a few on 1stDibs in the 3 large range… none really at retail.

Gradual Sofa: Not all as harsh as the above photo, but one of her most widely shared pieces. One of those integral 1970s pieces of modern furniture, very almost brutally simple and half-dumb, but from the bones up very right—strong construction, room with the aesthetics (cushions play off the shell)… made for Knoll in 1970… first as a chair. Seems to run in the $7,000 range (low end) new; as far as auctions go, they show up fairly regularly on LA—one every other month—for under $1,500. Wild discrepancy. There is a whole second economy out there for people who want to do a little bit of work. That’s how it’s always been. Not confusing, though, or a scam. Knoll always had good stateside distribution, and furniture gets around. From here, for this quarter of 2024, prices are as follows: Steal under $1,400, deal under $2,000, buy for yourself/a client above that.

Brigadier: There is also the Brigadier chair, which is very similar and from around then. It is probably too wide… or is it? Such are the limits of a weekly newsletter that makes aesthetic judgments on 100s of items a year. I can’t throw the hammer down on this thing. It’s all good. Though it is also definitely the chair’s point. These are even more affordable; they tend to be overseas, but pepper the markets there. It is wild. Maybe subtract $245 from the prices above. Or if you’re in a pinch, spend $4-5K on Pamono.

Ghost Chair: With Boeri above. This thing is so popular. In one sense it is a perfect encapsulation of difficult Miami Vice (2006) style (light and mirrors and smoke; very digital), or perhaps Las Vegas… this is what Robert Venturi wrote:

I still don’t know why people write like this. As a writer you should use two $5 words a year. What’s he trying to prove? It’s really just a dog whistle for people with money to hire him. He could’ve said it all in four sentences. Still, I concur. Some of these ideas above Boeri executed. The Ghost chair is two things. It is destabilizing in person; photos don’t do it justice. In fact it looks forgettable or generic in a photo. It’s much wider in person. (Boeri loved the X axis.) This said I do think this piece needs to be placed in a well-designed room to work. It can’t be a highlight. If the rest of the room sucks it won’t have enough counterpoint. It is too… plain and modern to affect bad staging and pieces. (There is probably an essay here about why some people love loud things, and pullable cheese.) Anyways, produced by Fiam in 1987 (prob their first hit; half their shit looks like this), and still in production. Older pieces are better, obviously (smokier), though I’m not sure the geometry is much different. Harder to find. I say wait it out for an O.G. but retros better than a decade old come down the pike p. regular—at fair prices. I’d say steal under $1,600, deal under $2,200 and buy for yourself at $2,500 and above.

Lunario for Gavina table: Identical or complementary to the above plain/modern/intellectual office aesthetic, though not as successfully executed… to me. It’s brutalist (do I need to explain why?) but I don’t think it works because it’s for the indoors. Who wants that? The reason why brutalism can never be ugly is because it’s outside. You can still see the sun shining against the most hideous building. Look at this one from my hometown of Ottawa:

Not so tough now. Anyways, always listed, never sells. Made by Knoll in 1970, an early commission by CB; prices affect my emotion and also the market: steal under $900, deal under $1100, buy for yourself at, say, $1,400 or more.

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Odds and ends:

Boborelax chair for Arflex: Not unlike the Strips, this is the rare perfect vertical chair… not many of those. out there. I wonder if we don’t see these types of chairs because 40% of America is prediabetic? If we were all able to do 15 push-ups these would be sold by the skid at places like Home Union and Bi-Rite. The reality is that there is not much institutional incentive (domestically) to make a chair this perfect. What is it? It’s cheap first of all (these things created a spate of knockoffs that were honestly pretty good), very low stakes, simple, and not a discussion item but a sort of… incidental piece of furniture. The chair you get because you need one shaped like this. But what else is there? Without getting into radical territory, isn’t this what companies are supposed to do? Some of them, anyways. There’s also the plain Bobo which is even better. Made for