Our specialists pick ten lots from the current sale against a brief every designer in this city recognises: hard light, open plan, doors that stay open.
This is a Circa edit rather than a survey. Ten lots from Escape to the Modernist Garden, picked by our specialists against one brief: a Los Angeles house with hard floors, high light levels, an open plan, and a door to the garden that is open most of the year. That brief rules out a lot of good furniture. It rules in a specific kind.
The rules we used
- Nothing that fights hard light. Pale oak, pine, rattan and raw metal hold up. High-gloss lacquer and dark veneer show every reflection in a room with three exposures.
- Low backs where possible. An open plan reads better when the seating stops below sightline height.
- Materials that can cross the threshold. Iron, leather, rattan and ceramic can spend an afternoon on a terrace without ceremony.
- One object per function, chosen properly, instead of three chosen quickly.
The ten
- Lot 49, Charlotte Perriand pair of La Cachette oak fireside chairs. A 10-inch seat height means they sit under a window line and open the room instead of dividing it.
- Lot 67, Roger Capron round ceramic and wood coffee table. A 41-inch tiled top is the one coffee table surface that survives a wet glass, a hot dish and direct sun.
- Lot 227, Jacques Adnet pair of iron and leather armchairs. Blackened metal and patinated leather, narrow at 24.5 inches, so they read as line rather than mass.
- Lot 165, Rene Gabriel RG202 oak sideboard. Sixty-nine inches of Reconstruction-era storage with cast aluminum pulls, built for use rather than display.
- Lot 265, Pierre Guariche Prefacto table. A biomorphic oak top on bent lacquered legs, small enough at 27 inches to move to whichever chair needs it.
- Lot 81, Louis Sognot rattan loop pendant lamp. Warm, open weave that throws pattern rather than glare, which is what a high ceiling in this city needs.
- Lot 207, Silas Seandel gilt bronze and glass coffee table. Hand-worked metal under clear glass, so the sculpture is visible from a standing position.
- Lot 149, Josef Hoffmann black leather Kubus sofa. Seventy-seven inches, rigorously rectilinear, the counterweight to a room full of organic forms.
- Lot 33, Alvar Aalto Model 403 stacking armchair. Bent birch from 1932 that can be a desk chair, a spare dining chair or a bedroom chair without looking wrong in any of them.
- Lot 303, Noe Raya wire brass sculpture. Looped brass wire that hangs long, moves with the door open, and needs no wall.
How we would put them in a room
The Hoffmann sofa takes the long wall and sets the geometry. The Adnet armchairs come in at an angle off it, low and open, with the Guariche table between them because it is light enough to move when the group changes size. The Capron table sits centrally on the hard floor, which is the only place a ceramic top makes sense, and takes the wet glasses. The Gabriel sideboard runs along the circulation side and does the work that built-ins usually do badly.
The Perriand fireside chairs belong near the garden doors, where a very low seat is an advantage rather than a problem. The Sognot pendant goes over the table, not over the seating. The Raya sculpture hangs in the double-height space if there is one, and in the stairwell if there is not.
The two we would fight for
If the budget only allowed two, we would take the Capron table and the Perriand chairs. The Capron is the piece guests touch every day and the one that improves rather than degrades with use. The Perriand chairs are documented to a single building at Arc 1600 and are the only lots on this list that are unlikely to come back through the room.
All ten can be seen at 249 South Mission Road during preview week. Bidding opens Saturday 12 September at 9:00 AM PT.
