SNAKE Q&A 006: Jaya Williams
LA-based architectural historian/designer on FLW, Paul Williams, Ponti
Now at Snake: Every other Friday or so an interview with a person in good standing of the newsletter whose taste in vintage, furniture, collectibles and adjacent fields is worth celebrating and learning from. Sellers, buyers, set decorators, artists, adjacents, etc…
Housekeeping:
TONIGHT: the Toronto release of my book, at Innis College on 2 Sussex Ave, at 7 PM. I will be showing the incredibly violent yakuza movie “Graveyard of Honour.” Some tix at door — swing by. (Info here)
The MIAMI book release is NEXT Friday, June 16, at Lower East Coast, the boutique. There will be a nice big visual display of the research process that went into it all. Detailed info:
Thank you. And now the Q&A…
Here’s the sixth…
Jaya Williams / IG / Los Angeles / designer & architectural historian
Jaya holds a deep architectural and aesthetic key to Los Angeles, and stays busy at Studio Shamshiri.
Q&A 006
Fav flea market?
Too many good ones so I’ll limit myself to local—Long Beach Antique Market.
Best flea market day ever—what did you get?
A life-sized five-foot tall butter knife.
Best eBay purchase?
I’ve bought a lot of old electrical switch plates, plumbing fixtures and antique window hardware on eBay for restoration projects and those are the most satisfying, dopamine-spiking finds because the supply is dwindling and it’s so rare to find an exact match.
But my favorite eBay purchase to date was six Grete Schütte-Lihotzky aluminum pull-bins. I got them for a small kitchen, which is exactly what she designed them for in the 1920s. The idea was twofold: to repurpose technology and innovation from wartime materials to make affordable, reproducible homes for working class people returning from war and simultaneously to minimize the burden of labor for women in task spaces throughout the home. Their design is inspired by old ammunition boxes.
Best Craigslist find?
Smoked amber plexiglas Roche Bobois cube shelves from 1960, also probably a few strangers who have become friends.
Best LiveAuctioneers find?
A Gio Ponti Apta daybed. It’s always the Italian auction houses that have the most jaw dropping pieces for sale if you can get the momentum to go through shipping and customs.
IG seller account you hang out on/look at their stuff the most?
@seventhhousegallery - they aren’t an Instagram seller per se but we memo and buy from them at the firm I work for and I keep up with what they have through ig. I also love @denlosangeles. They are good people who are knowledgeable about California mid-century.
Thing you most regret passing on?
A semi-adult sized version of a dress I threw a tea party in for my 5th birthday. The pattern and texture were the exact same—must have been from the same bolt of fabric! I hadn’t seen it in 20 years and I’ve never seen it again.
Best thing you got for insanely cheap?
A Frisian Kerfsnede hand-carved medicine cabinet. It’s an old Dutch folk art chip carving technique and it is so charming. Still unclear on how or why I got it for so cheap. It even has its original skeleton key.
Best thing you overpaid for?
There was a Paul Williams house being torn down a few years ago in nearby Hancock Park, which was a travesty to anyone who knows Los Angeles architecture and its short but precious history. I was able to snag a massive 10’ operable arched window that I rebuilt as a ground-floor exterior door. The salvage man who was brokering the deal knew me and saw the look in my eyes and thus charged me a lot for it given how much work it needed but I don’t regret it in the end:
with my 10 foot window back when it was lime green and peeling before installation. Pants are @smalltalk_studio.
Window is now a kitchen door…
Favorite piece of furniture you own?
My dad has an under-the-radar second life as a woodworker and he turned me these table bases on the lathe inspired by nuclear reactors. At first you don’t really realize what they are but they feel sort of foreboding in a beautiful way.
What’s one thing you own that you won’t ever sell?
A tiny Svenskt Tenn engraved pewter vase from 1933:
Piece you have now that you despise and want to replace?
I try not to keep things that I truly despise… I’ve moved a lot in the last few years and I’ve gotten rid of all of the rot.
Who do you think sold more records: Nelly Furtado or Three 6 Mafia?
Nelly Furtado, no question.
Secret spot that you love but won’t tell anyone about? (please describe as judiciously as possible while omitting any identifiable characteristics)
I know a very old semi-retired machinist and plumbing restorationist who will take to the grave some of the most exquisitely detailed, laborious restoration techniques and encyclopedic archival knowledge of domestic fixtures from the last 150 years. I will never tell anyone his contact info and I have to beg him to take on projects for me in exchange for showing him how to do basic tasks on his computer.
He has casual multiples of the best plumbing of all time hidden away, like the Crane Neuvogue pedestal lav:
Rarest/most canon vintage thing you have but never wear?
1970s Bottega cocktail dress that I am waiting to wear to a wedding deserving of it.
Most jealousy-inducing thing you’ve seen? (e.g. I saw a guy in Foremost jeans once in 2012 and I’ve never gotten over it)
God, where to begin. Simply passing by the pin-up boards from room to room in my workplace is a daily barrage and constant passive tease of unattainably beautiful things, but at least as of right now: I've been eyeballing this red lacquered metal console that a colleague of mine proposed for one of our projects a while ago and I've been secretly wanting to steal it. Alas, it's too expensive for a random unattributed and rather specific piece of furniture, but it makes me feel things—something about the feet and the green glimmer of the glass and the rich, pickling red... ah…
Another easy jealousy-inducer: Corbusier's Le Cabanon.
Favorite Russian novelist?
I black out when people ask me for favorites. I don’t know how I’ve made it this far into this interview.
Is there a field of collecting are you looking to get into in the near future? (Furniture era/paper/autographs/stamps/model trains/computer shirts/90s Harley shirts/digital watches/lighters/slot cars/faberge eggs/Amish quilts etc)
Viennese Secessionist-era furniture. There is a sort of curious aesthetic overlap with American Arts and Crafts and later Art Deco even though these things were happening in very different contexts. It’s particularly interesting when you take Rudolph Schindler, a byproduct of both the Viennese Secessionist movement and his Frank Lloyd Wright training and see what he goes on to produce in Southern California from the 1920s to the 50s. I love Schindler and FLW but not many can reasonably collect even their worst or most overlooked work. I am interested in what came before their fame (though it isn’t always more affordable).
What’s the item that’s been on your watchlist the longest without you having pulled the trigger?
Longest thing on my watchlist is a José Zanine Caldas side table. 2 years? Never sold, waiting to see if it will come back to auction.
Is the best vintage/furniture online or in the wild?
I suspect most people would say in the wild but I prefer online. I need to turn things over in my head a thousand times, put them into furniture plans, stare at them, have nightmares about them.
Has all the cool shit been discovered? (Yes or no answer only)
No.
Any vintage accounts you want to rep or boost? Furniture? (feel free to include local spots)
Not furniture but an account I could scroll through forever is this writer from Prague named Adam Štěch of @okolo_architecture. He documents the best modernist architecture that ever was.
Follow Jaya on Instagram.
LOVE!! what a great surprise to wake to