Cindy's Salon

November 20, 2008 | Link This | Email this | Comments (0)

Jacksons, Stockholm

The good news is that sales at Sanford Smith’s Modernism Show at the Park Avenue Armory this past weekend were meeting dealers’ expectations as of Monday afternoon. The bad news is that expectations were pretty low. By all accounts, sales were well down this year compared to recent years. One dealer told me he was having his worst Modernism show ever, another quipped that ok was the new good in terms of sales totals. Nobody I spoke with was particularly surprised by this, nor were they particularly disheartened. Several dealers proudly reported that they had broken even, which if they were a hedge fund would be a stell...Read More

November 13, 2008 | Link This | Email this | Comments (1)

We don’t need Chicken Little to tell us that prices are falling in the art and design markets. Recent results at the Phillips de Pury & Company, Sotheby’s and Christie’s art auctions, and the Wright and Sollo/Rago design auctions, will suffice. With som...Read More

November 11, 2008 | Link This | Email this | Comments (5)

My father passed away in April of this year, at the age of 79. His death was sudden, and was unexpected as these things go. There was no time to prepare, and no chance to say goodbye. We were left with his memory, and with a bunch of stuff to go through. I drove his car this past summer to see if keeping it would be a good thing or a bad thing for me (good, it turned out, and I still have it). While rooting around in the glove compartment, I found a mini voice-recorder on which he had dictated four lines of advice. I don’t know if he read these lines somewhere, or composed them. I don't even know if he recorded them for himself or for us. In light of circumstances, however, they have become parting words, spoken to us in his voice, and first heard four months after his death.

My father was not in a design-related field; he was a lawyer ...Read More

November 6, 2008 | Link This | Email this | Comments (0)

 
Fr. Hitzbleck, Dusseldorf; Dominikus Bohm, Koln

One of the building blocks of a good library of modern design is a book published by Julius Hoffman in 1930. Titled Die Neue Raumkunst in Europa und Amerika, it is perhaps the best single volume I have seen depicting the early vision of the modernist interior. Unfortunately, it is also a rare volume, and is consequently expensive at $350-$750, when it does turn up. Still, it is worth a look. The roster of desig...Read More

October 23, 2008 | Link This | Email this | Comments (1)

Villa Arpel

I saw Jacques Tati’s “Mon Oncle” (1958) the other night at the behest of my girlfriend/design partner Joan Michaels, who had seen it on cable a few nights before, and immediately rented it so she could show me the architecture, interiors, and furnishings. I had not seen the movie in years, and we watched it closely, oogling (and eventually Googling) the interiors and trying to guess who designed the furniture, lighting, and decorations. Focusing on the furniture, I came to realize a few things about the film:

...Read More