Cool furniture, design objects and desiderata

[steveoffice]

Oh come on. RH is complete garbage...

 

[Van Veen]

The set layout for Fraiser's apartment was spot on for the character. I never paid much attention to the show when it aired, given that I was a teenager, but I started watching a year or two ago and got a kick out of the first episode especially.

It's a great show. The snobbery is spot on.



I like to imagine Fraiser would be a regular here and have epic debates with the other SF Illuminati.

 

[imatlas]

Somewhere in all of this is a circa 1750 English tall case clock that I inherited from my father. This is going to take some time...

 

[Gus]

Anyone here have cement countertops? If so, how are they? Would you do them again?

 

[venessian]

Anyone here have cement countertops? If so, how are they? Would you do them again?

I am an architect, have spec's and seen many, both concrete and Syndecrete/similar, and some are 20+ years old and still perfectly fine. As with any finish surface, proper installation is paramount. Properly installed, they are great. I love the aesthetic also. Yes, definitely recommend if the material is to your taste.

 

[Gus]

I am an architect, have spec's and seen many, both concrete and Syndecrete/similar, and some are 20+ years old and still perfectly fine. As with any finish surface, proper installation is paramount. Properly installed, they are great. I love the aesthetic also. Yes, definitely recommend if the material is to your taste.

Thanks for this feedback.

 

[Piobaire]

Thought you guys might find this interesting.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/key-auctions-saint-john-furniture-1.5166217

No Piob Chairs were located though.

 

[otc]

Those stories always seem funny to me. How did the kids manage to absorb nothing from their parents?

From the ages involved and the story (died at 84 in 2010, didn't leave Chicago until the 70s), it seems like the children would have grown up in a notable Frank Lloyd Wright home* and been surrounded by this kind of furniture their whole lives.

Like...you never realized that your parents' furniture wasn't some Ikea stuff? Never thought you might like a nice chair like your parents have in their cabin only to see the price tag?

*Notable because the owner's wife ran away with FLW a few years after the house was built. He built Taliesin in part to shelter their unmarried relationship from the world, and she was then murdered there by a deranged servant.

 

[imatlas]

Those stories always seem funny to me. How did the kids manage to absorb nothing from their parents?

From the ages involved and the story (died at 84 in 2010, didn't leave Chicago until the 70s), it seems like the children would have grown up in a notable Frank Lloyd Wright home* and been surrounded by this kind of furniture their whole lives.

Like...you never realized that your parents' furniture wasn't some Ikea stuff? Never thought you might like a nice chair like your parents have in their cabin only to see the price tag?

*Notable because the owner's wife ran away with FLW a few years after the house was built. He built Taliesin in part to shelter their unmarried relationship from the world, and she was then murdered there by a deranged servant.

Eh, I’m not surprised at all. It’s pretty common for collectors kids to have no idea what the parent’s stuff is worth. And MCM was not particularly valuable until recently. The same auction a decade ago would have brought a pittance.

I’ve reminded my wife repeatedly that she needs to reach out to one of a very short list of book dealers to sell our books if I die first, anyone else will just try to rip her off.

 

[otc]

I guess this just feels a bit different from other sorts of collections. Like, it doesn't seem like these people were particularly collectors...more like they were people in tune to design and were buying nice pieces when they were young. They weren't continuing to buy MCM stuff through the 80s or anything, they just held on to what they had through retirement (it is all visible in the old photos that were found).

Like...Foo has spoken about the experience of living with this sort of furniture and children. If you want it to still be intact decades later, you must have at least instilled some level of respect (or fear) into the children to keep them from destroying it.

I totally get not knowing that grandma's old stuff is worth anything...but growing up in one of america's most famous architect's houses and not realizing that your parents might have had some nice stuff?

Or is those more of a case of they just didn't know what was there, not specifically that they couldn't figure out it was valuable? If this was just a cabin and not a regular residence, I could see if 80 year old mom doesn't really go there anymore and if her kids haven't been there in forever. Then it sits there for 16 years waiting for the estate to figure out what to do with it and nobody visits since they think it is just some cabin.

 

[TheFoo]

Like...Foo has spoken about the experience of living with this sort of furniture and children. If you want it to still be intact decades later, you must have at least instilled some level of respect (or fear) into the children to keep them from destroying it.

I do think parental approach/attitude makes a difference.

My own parents had a lot of MCM furniture, including lots of high-quality Danish design (Wegner, Mogensen, etc.). But they were never "into" design and couldn't tell you what pieces of theirs are worth what today--they just always liked well-made things. Growing up, I can't say I ever "feared" using or playing on our furniture. I was just instilled with an awareness of certain things being more delicate than others and generally taught to respect other people's belongings.

We've tried to do the same with our daughter. She runs around our apartment freely, making pillow forts on our Florence Knoll sofa and using the Flag Halyard chair like a jungle gym. But then, she also knows not to sit on the marble Jasper Morrison coffee table or keep the sharp glass doors open on our Glas Italia credenza. She does not pick up "grown-up" art books without asking for help first (we then flip through the pages together). She does not go touch the cactus or ceramic vases on the window sill. She's never even come close to coloring on our white walls. And she's three! Maybe we're just lucky, but it wasn't particularly hard to teach her basic carefulness and how to perceive fragility and danger. We just made the effort, whereas we notice a lot of other parents don't even try.

You can easily observe on the playground, at school, in other people's homes, etc., to what extent people teach their kids basic manners and respect. A lot of parents don't say or do anything even if they see their child push or hit another--so, of course they aren't going to stop them from jumping off the sofa arm at someone else's house.

 

[Mr. Six]

Anyone here have cement countertops? If so, how are they? Would you do them again?

My mother has had them for 10-15 years. They've gotten discolored from water around the sink and needed re-staining. They might have gotten discolored in another location. She occasionally puts beeswax on them to maintain a seal. They've been plenty durable. Personally, I think they're fine, but I don't love them as counters. I have all butcher block counters so that I can cut on any surface without having to use a cutting board if I don't want to. (Some raw meat I'll use a cutting board for, depending on other factors.) I wouldn't have anything else as a kitchen counter, so maybe I'm not the best judge.

 

[SkinnyGoomba]

I think they're taking those quotes out of context, they probably knew what it was but didn't realize that it was worth a lot. I can see that being the case.

May also be a bit of false modesty.

My son is pretty careful around the house now, but that took some doing. He's also very careful around other people's houses mainly because he knows, Dad is watching! I have an innate sense now of when he's up to something.

 

[soender]

If anything, I'd choose a cement countertop for the patina it receives over time. Other than that, beech would be my preference, but only if the casework wasn't beech too.

 

[Van Veen]

My mother has had them for 10-15 years. They've gotten discolored from water around the sink and needed re-staining. They might have gotten discolored in another location. She occasionally puts beeswax on them to maintain a seal. They've been plenty durable. Personally, I think they're fine, but I don't love them as counters. I have all butcher block counters so that I can cut on any surface without having to use a cutting board if I don't want to. (Some raw meat I'll use a cutting board for, depending on other factors.) I wouldn't have anything else as a kitchen counter, so maybe I'm not the best judge.

My dream kitchen has mostly butcher block countertops, with a small section of marble as a pastry/pizza station.

I bought a 24x24 butcher block a few months ago and it's made prep so much easier. Of course you need to maintain butcher block, which is what turns most people off. (Most people can't even be bothered to get their knives sharpened.)

How do you maintain your countertops?