The end of squiggly/Memphis lamps?

Observer 108: Seating, Italy, the Kitchen

Hello, a strong week of furniture awaits us: many auctions for seating (leather, couches, leather couches) and lighting (and wood) which fits in perfect for spring cleaning—out with the plywood, in with the [Insert French, Croatian or Italian designer here]. Prices below, after

Housekeeping:

• Tested some new SS25 workout clothing for HighSnobiety here; will attend my thoughts more fully in

  SNAKE SUPER HEALTH
  but wanted to link.

• My friend and occasional workout partner Drew is running the New York Marathon this fall and is raising cash for the Mount Sinai Adolescent Center, a group that helps local New York teenagers in need. Donate here so he can run. He is the first Snake-sponsored long distance athlete. Before this he was sponsored by Snake for powerlifting (total forthcoming).

• My publisher Shining Life released a complete oral history about Floorpunch, the best and coolest hardcore band of the 1990s. The book is complete and impressive; it is a work befitting the band. outYou can order it here; I wrote up a thing for mail-order customers that they will get with the book.

• I also wrote about the change in lamp styles (round to wavy) for Ssense, which here. I’ll discuss that properly below.

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Price Results from this past week

Six Knoll moment chairs; $80

Last week’s email focused on chairs and highlighted local to New York and LA auctions which ended at the following prices (in parentheses):

• Grassi leather barstools ($100); van der Rohe BRNO chairs in rare upholstery ($750); McCobb Planner Group maple side chair ($350); Castelli Ferrieri (4870) for Kartell ($160; less than the starting price) among others.

A number of auctions listed in that newsletter edition (mostly chairs as well as a half-dozen sofas) are ending this week, so scroll down there and bid; don’t miss out. It’s found here:

One of the best weeks for chairs in eons

Also included in last week’s newsletter: a Mourgue Bouloum recliner ($400); Kita’s Wink recliner (~$800), a Mourgue Djinn loveseat ($1,000), six Knoll Moment chairs in three colors ($80), and eight David Rowland for Thonet softec chairs ($325), similar to Belotti’s Spaghetti chair classic.

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OBS 108

Was fun to write about these trends in lighting… somehow, over the past year—maybe less than that—we’ve fully excised the overexposed squiggly, mushroomy lamps from the recent past. It’s something. The old ones are still in stores. But they’re dead on the table. Not as much fun, or any fun really, to look at them these days. But as a vintage person it is confusing: who are people to say that something designed by Ettore Sottsass is over?

A topic for another newsletter—or perhaps another writer. But to me this is a sign we’re evolving as a design market. It is not as if every item from every Prada collection is cosigned—or every item from their archive, more correctly… Some designers’ decisions… go through periods of not getting talked about, for reasons outside the piece’s control.

I do think it also brings up a couple of questions: what should owners of these vintage pieces—real Memphis lamps, or the original mushroom lamps (Nesso for Artemide; here’s one)—do? Are they done for?

I think there are two answers here. One is: if you care about being accepted and the very exposed piece isn’t something that you are attached to attached to then considering selling it at a high (people still buy these) or putting it into storage. The other is that if you love the piece and it is meaningful to you (maybe not a Nesso, but a Memphis) but recognize this sea change, then maybe tamp it down some. This will be hard with bigger pieces like sofas, or with cash-grab recent ones (even if they are small). But a minor Sottsass or Memphis piece can probably stay (or anchor) a room for decades (I said it) even if its whole aesthetic gets smoked in the groundswell. (After all, more staid pieces, like the ESU and bentwood Thonet live well-hidden among different aesthetics for years.)

To me this fall out of style is a challenge: if you have Sottsass lighting—like this random minor lamp (insane)—they can be set against other things or hidden…. maybe along with a Scarpa Celestia or a DIY thing, or mismatched or against something even more out of pocket. (Or all of the above; rooms need lots of lighting and furniture.) These items will overshadow the lamp and place it in context as just one piece against others. The best items to set this little lamp off against are loud ones apart from this trend, or other lamps or, even better