Whither good taste? Breuer's hut saved and Auction Observer 091
On hideous desks and Vibram FiveFingers
Welcome back—the past few weeks have been thin for auctions, but now they are back.
A great piece earlier this week in
’s NEVERWORNS Substack about the Vibram FiveFinger shoes and the limits of taste and beauty… was reminded of these shoes and the post as I found a very twisted and even uglier—one leg off, pointy glass—dining table on auction that screams mafia boss/Sheepshead Bay/Miami/Columbus dentist and which I could in no way condone, but after repeated looks at the thing it began to grow on me. Read the piece in earnest:The line for me in the piece was this: “they zshush up a boring, bland ole outfit.” Does this desk do the same? You decide:
Christ. Hideous. A juke to good taste. Whoever buys this should throw this desk out and break it into 100 small pieces, then put those pieces in a Toyota truck and send it away. Unless…. but… wait a minute. There is also something here. It would look good to do work on.
Both items, I think, bring up big questions. How much jolie laide is too much? And where is the line, and what happens if you step over? The shoes answer these question more directly than this piece of shit desk because women’s fashion is a more mature market and taste is more specifically displayed. Everyone in there more or less knows what they’re doing. For furniture, because we’re in the early stages, as it happens, there are less rules. Is this desk bad? Yes. But… does it have a monopoly here? Nope… it’s aesthetically unforgiving, but is just part of a room. It can be squeezed in somewhere… FiveFingers are an alternative to ballet flats and counter bigger shoes; this is a cheaper and more tasteless way to do Memphis Milano and a nice break from mid-modern and any other furniture that is held back and which is correctly labeled as good. I think this one is a go, though—design’s for the home, so it can be more expressive. If you can’t break a rule in your house, then where can you? As for the Five Toes, I don’t think I can do them except to the gym, the movies, errands, Montero, that one place in Bed Stuy that serves shitty kolaches, picking up raw milk and going on my nightly, mid-workday and bi-nightly walks.
Good news on the archival front—Marcel Breuer’s Cape Cod home has been purchased by the Cape Cod Modern House Trust, and will be preserved. Here’s a column I wrote on the house last summer, for Dwell.
I went long writing about the destruction of mid-modern homes earlier in this newsletter, thanks to some great information from Quinn Garvey, who is worth a follow. One of the better people addressing design through video:
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A light week of auctions, focusing mostly on local items, though plenty of quality pieces. I would rate it strong for summer.
Selected past auction results from a few weeks ago:
Three Boby carts, $400, $425, $400 (Jesus)
Perriand Ombra 512 loungers unsold
Charles Rennie Mackintosh Hill House chairs belonging to Jim Carrey, pair, $1,500 (he’s from Newmarket, Ontario)
Jim Carrey’s Bellini queen size bed $2,800
Perriand LC7 swivel $450 (unreal)
Barbaglia & Marco Colombo "Tabla" Lamp, $200
Modernist chromed chair and stool, Mourgue & Covey, $100 (uber steal)
Mario Bellini, brown leather CAB chair, $400
Vignelli Heller rainbow lot, 27 pieces, $250
Roche Bobois future armchair & Ottoman, $250
Panton Chrome steel box chair, $400
Frank Gehry Knoll Hat Trick Bentwood Chair, $275 (ridiculous)
Obs 91
Everything ending Sunday
Rietveld chair, NYC: I write about this little fucker a few times a year, this time because it has sold this year for under $400 and then passing in another auction. It keeps going down in price as other canon and statement pieces get more expensive. On an aesthetic level it is shocking… from 1918… One of the reasons it can be found at so many wild price points is because it has been in production for a very long time, and its plans are out there… this one is from Cassina, ‘80s or 90s, and is practically luxury compared to what you can buy today. It is cheap because anyone collecting for work (and not sport) snatched up the earlier canon models. Also a great argument for color. It’s hard to get color this right. Perfect, perfect item, in New York, $550
Quistgaard x Nissen Langaa Stokke lounger, NYC: Have to be honest, I’ve never seen this before. It is from around 1960. I don’t think they should do the “x” thing out of respect to the time period. Jens Quistgaard was the chief designer for Dansk for three decades, he made a lot of teak kitchen items (cheese graters, lots and lots of flatware, a series of unavoidable salt and pepper shakers); Nissen Langaa (misspelled in the auction) was more or less Richard Nissen’s work with Quistgard in rebranding his father’s company. Both Denmark, nice and Nordic… earthtones are soothing for jeans (Evan Kinori) and work (Carhartt) and the kitchen (Dansk wood cheese graters) and even better at home because it is safe and domestic. There’s something immediate and obvious about brown and suede and muted colors. Not many pieces with these angles have this color. Runs about $1,000 to three times that; lots of results in completed by Bidhaus, an auction house that I personally would never buy anything from. $400
Springer style marble coffee top, NYC: Not much to say about this except it does the fake rich people thing very well and very quietly while flirting successfully with doing nothing. More furniture should do nothing. Springer items are more gaudy and more 1970s… this shape is a few years before that. But with the colors it could be 1980s. A good no-brainer buy/seamless addition to a number of interior set-ups… close, cheap, has a point of view, and is liquid and can be sold to anyone in a couple of years for more than you paid for. Harder to liquify super trended-up pieces in the future, unless you’re an expert. $100
Below the jump: the best rug I’ve seen in a couple of years (it is loud and deranged and stylish; it stands out a bit more than the Persians), the ugly desk in question at the top of the newsletter, some nice staples at at fine rates, a couple of severely affordable era-specific chairs, a couple of which are deranged, one of which is very conservative and tasteful—all close to New York or LA. (GUIDE: How to buy items at auction.)
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