Cool furniture, design objects and desiderata

[SkinnyGoomba]



Its funny you say that. LC seems to have made a career out of stealing other peoples thunder. Eileen Gray hated him for it

There are not many designers or architects who have completely avoiding borrowing, it's quite difficult to be an island of creativity when you have been influenced your entire life by your surroundings and other creations made by colleagues.

You can see how the styles differ slightly, but whose to say who the creative force was in that collaboration. Same with the friendship with Eileen gray, was she first influenced or did she provide the influence.

 

[twistoffat]



There are not many designers or architects who have completely avoiding borrowing, it's quite difficult to be an island of creativity when you have been influenced your entire life by your surroundings and other creations made by colleagues.

You can see how the styles differ slightly, but whose to say who the creative force was in that collaboration. Same with the friendship with Eileen gray, was she first influenced or did she provide the influence.

True but compare LC´s house to Eileens E1027. He even wanted her house and tried to make it his own by painting those dreadful murals. Gray was not so much a provider of influence as an innovator. Remenber many of her modernist pieces were from the start of the last century. Even now when many talk of modernism they refer to Eames and Knoll from the 50´s. Gray was producing at a time when most were stuck in th earts and crafts era

 

[SkinnyGoomba]

He is not free of guilt, but I wanted to offer some perspective. These people were all collaborating at one point or another.

 

[itsstillmatt]

Eileen Gray is popular because her stuff is expensive on the secondary market, and it is the non-modernistness of it, the tiny production, handmade nature of the pieces that makes it so, both in that it limits supply on the auction market and it brings in the exclusivity buyer, a group who spends the high prices and has never warmed to modernism because of its democratic nature. That's not to bag on her stuff, but to bag rather on the lemmings who buy so much of it on the new market because somebody spent $25 million for a chair that represented what she actually did, which was more art nouveau.

That's not to say that her modernist furniture isn't perfectly nice, its just not what made her great, but what made her accessible, even though it was still all made as one off furniture, rather than as something with any sort of modernist sensibility in production.

 

[Find Finn]



Eileen Gray is popular because her stuff is expensive on the secondary market,

Wouldn't that be the other way round.

 

[itsstillmatt]

No, because the high price secondary market doesn't cater to the modern design crowd, it caters to the Christies and Sotheby's crowd. You know, touch the magic and all.

 

[Find Finn]

BUT you don't get popular by having expensive stuff, your stuff get expensive because of it being popular.

 

[itsstillmatt]



BUT you don't get popular by having expensive stuff, your stuff get expensive because of it being popular.

No, you get expensive because there is greater demand than supply. Her supply is very limited for original works unlike almost every other modernist furniture maker. It is more akin to somebody like Jean-Michel Frank, and frankly, the work and concept is far more similar to Frank and similar people than it is to any sort of modernism. I don't know if you have had much experience with auction houses like Christies, but they cater to a certain type of buyer, and the prices achieved at auction are significant in driving popular beliefs about works, but the high prices do not indicate previous mass popularity in any way, as the great majority are not possible buyers of the works in question. All that matters for high auction prices is a popularity among interior decorators with deep pocketed clients, but the prices then become important pieces of information which are digested by others with an interest in design.

 

[Find Finn]



No, you get expensive because there is greater demand than supply.

Not entirely correct, supply doesn't limit whether something is popular or not, just look at Eames and a lot of the danes, their stuff is dime a dozen.

 

[itsstillmatt]



No, you get expensive because there is greater demand than supply.

Not entirely correct, supply doesn't limit whether something is popular or not, just look at Eames and a lot of the danes, their stuff is dime a dozen.

Actually, it is 1000000% correct, but you seem to want to switch between popularity and price at each turn. You are probably Canadian. Now piss off.

 

[Find Finn]

Nope and nope.

 

[SkinnyGoomba]

I assume Matt is talking about things like Ruhlman. Sotheby's and Christies make a huge production out of it to maintain insane pricing but it's not necessarily popular to anyone except a small crowd of buyers that are big into French Art Deco.

Stuff like this also appeals to buyer searching for things that do not have mass appeal.

 

[SkinnyGoomba]

If this has any interest I'll take some pictures that don't suck. Building the doors next.

Oh, here's my study I finished it a while back but never posted it.

 

[itsstillmatt]



I assume Matt is talking about things like Ruhlman. Sotheby's and Christies make a huge production out of it to maintain insane pricing but it's not necessarily popular to anyone except a small crowd of buyers that are big into French Art Deco.

Stuff like this also appeals to buyer searching for things that do not have mass appeal.

Yes. Also, if you have dealt with the desecrators in question, you realize that they will not buy much mass produced modernism, even though mass production is one of the most important aspects of modernism, both because they don't want to spend low prices in a percentage world and because they generally fancy themselves as 21st century Ruhlmans and Franks, not Eames making stuff for the masses, so they feel kin to the earlier ones. What that means is a lot of money chasing short supply, so high prices at a level that is multiples of the next group, not incremental from. My other contention is that this gives a sort of halo effect to these people in the general market, and while you can't find much from the others, there are a lot of Eileen Gray tables to buy. Not that it isn't a nice table, it is. It's just not really my speed.

 

[SkinnyGoomba]

I don't loathe them, but do find them to be missing the point often times. The unfortunate effect is that is makes a lot of this stuff completely untouchable.

There is an interesting ripple effect to some of these things, nakashima is huge in my area and goes for stupid prices, the interesting effect is that it has caused character grade walnut flitches to go for insane money as well. A dining table sized walnut slab will easily grab $1500-$2500 depending on the types of grain displayed in the wood and if there is a matching slab. The equivalent in regular lumber is worth $200-$400.