Transcript: I do feel as though that designers are much more savvy about working with big bucks retailers and working with a wider array of markets in terms of price point. And as a result there is an endlessly growing appreciation of that term “design”. And you know and you can thank, you know, companies like Target. You can thank even . . . Even you might say you could thank companies like Restoration Hardware; which Restoration Hardware has really changed a lot over the lat couple of years I’ve noticed as an outside observer. But early on six, seven years ago, Restoration Hardware was frequently kind of reissuing lost . . . lost artifacts of American industrial design from the ‘20s and ‘30s. And that was a very exciting time for me, you know watching . . . watching cocktail shakers from the ‘20s being rediscovered. Like ___________ penguin cocktail shaker which for a while was kind of like the unofficial mascot of the Cooper-Hewitt. It was available through Restoration Hardware in a re-issued format. And I think obviously today the growth of modernism as a market in terms of the resale of pieces means that there is a lot more reissuing going on than there ever was in the past. And so whole programs like Vitra, which is really a hybrid of a museum design collection and a furniture manufacturer . . . you know this entity in Germany has shaped so much of what we collect, you know, and what we use in our homes because they reissue icons by like Prouve and Noguchi for the first time that were not available in a mass market version.

I would say the thing that excites me the most is not going to Miami and seeing the latest at Art Basel, and seeing the limited editions being ___________ for six figures. I think what excites me the most is opening up the New York Times in their home section, and they’re talking about some, you know, husband and wife team in Brooklyn who have discovered a new doily that they’re making out of, you know, some sort of recycled moss. And that’s just . . . That’s what excites me. It’s that endless search for something new. And it’s also the rediscovering the past and being able to use today’s market to reintroduce it.

Recorded on: 1/30/08

Transcript: It’s a very addictive process. And I myself, I’m not a formal auctioneer. I have done . . . I actually have done quite a bit of charity auctioneering, but charity auctioneering is a lot different than real auctioneering because there you’re working with numbers and you have to make tight decisions. And I’m a little too dyslexic for that, and so my goodbye to my auctions is when I’m in the room next to the auctioneers looking out over the room . . . it’s always a series of . . . For the most part I’m fortunate to say it’s been . . . it’s been, you know . . . the market has been very good to me and we’ve had quite a good run. But you still have your moments of crushing low. You still have that moment when you’ve put your heart and soul into selling a piece. And unlike a gallerist who can do an exhibition; and you can have that exhibition up for two and a half months; and you can work on a client and say, over a period of time, get that client to think with you on a piece; you know it has to happen in that second at auction, so it’s like it’s either gonna fly or it’s gonna bomb. And you just gotta get used to the bomb because once in a while it’s gonna happen.

Recorded on: 1/30/08

Transcript: You have to know when to say goodbye to pieces that you love but just don’t make economic sense. It’s the toughest thing for me to do because I think I fantasize myself as some sort of, you know, curator on a deadline every season. There are always the $2,000 to $3,000 experiments that do not make economic sense, and which I get wrapped on the knuckles you know . . . you know by fellow executives at Sotheby’s. Without a doubt the trend in the better 20th-century-design auctions is to focus on the higher and higher value. It’s what makes economic sense. And without a doubt I spend much more of my time focusing on the few pieces that are worth in the six figures than I can with collections of objects that are worth a few thousand dollars apiece. So the most difficult thing is to say goodbye to a piece that you know that if you really treated it with . . . with a kind of reverence, you could, you know, introduce to a new group of collectors; but that it’s just not ready yet for prime time. And then you hate it if that piece ends up at a smaller auction house, and maybe it doesn’t get photographed very well. Or maybe it ends up on E-bay. You know but you have to know when to say when.

Recorded on: 1/30/08

Transcript: The world of acquiring work for an auction catalog is . . . It’s quite hilarious because it’s definitely this insane, high-low aspect to everything that we do. Because on one hand there is very much that kind of populist, making somebody rich overnight appeal to putting together an auction, which is very addictive. There’s nothing greater than, you know, when the proverbial elderly lady in Rochester writes you and says, you know, “I saw you on some,” you know, “Internet site. It sounds like you’re . . . I have this piece of furniture. Is this by,” you know, “____________? My parents acquired it at a department store in 1938 in New York,” and it is! And it’s . . . So there’s that aspect. We have a one off relationship with the client that pulls the Declaration of Independence out of their basement. The other time you have long-term relationships with pickers – the guys in vans who go out there and find the stuff that people are not savvy enough to call us about – the stuff that goes through estate sales; the stuff that ends up in foreclosure auctions; the things that get put . . . left out by the side of the road. If you don’t have a good network of dudes in vans in the post-war design business, you’re finished. And you’ve gotta maintain excellent relationships with them so that they bring the piece to you and not to your competitors. But on the other side, the high side of the coin, there’s nothing more exciting than meeting with curators at a museum who have decided to ____________ a piece; who have decided that, you know, this piece isn’t right for their collection and they would like to sell that piece to bring more money in to create . . . get more pieces. In December we sold a grand piano by Gilbert ____________ from the Museum of Modern Art’s collection. And the piano had been in their auditorium and was being used by the Department of Film to accompany silent movies. But as a piece it’s a piano. And even though . . . It was an extremely rare piece by a very unsung 1930s American industrial designer. It’s a piano, and a piano is a very, very hard thing for a museum to display. So they sold it with us; and you know nothing more exciting than, you know, having that kind of provenance when putting together a catalog. And then finally we’re working with, you know . . . I continue to work with some of the great collectors out there. And with them, well they already know much more than I do in many of these areas. It’s more a question of meeting with them and going well, you know, “What do you wanna do now? What do you wanna sell? And is it the right time?”

Recorded on: 1/30/08

Transcript: I do still feel that a great collection is not based necessarily on value. If I was putting together an American industrial design collection, which I’ve kind of dabbled with over the years, it’s absolutely possible to put in artifacts – whether it’s a meat slicer by ___________; or an outboard motor; or a cocktail shaker that you can acquire on E-bay; you can acquire at the low budget kind of swap meat shows like the Triple Pier Show here in Manhattan; you can only spend a few hundred dollars for some of these things, but it’s how selective you are. I think there’s two forms of collection. There’s collections that take a curatorial eye, and really just focus on a certain theme and develop that theme, and every piece juxtaposes with each other. And then there’s the great obsessives – the people that have to have everything by that designer. And maybe those collectors – the best of that group are the ones that, as years go by, are not afraid to refine that collection and sell off certain stuff that isn’t quite holding the test of time. So I identify with both the obsessive compulsive collecting community and the minimalist, “I wanna imitate Vitra and create a perfect chair” collection community.

Recorded on: 1/30/07

Transcript: What captures my eye is I truly feel that I am most touched by work that has some sort of connection to nature. It is about the biomorphic – even zoomorphic if you wanna be fanciful – tendencies of a certain piece. And I’ve always found that I am less of a hardcore modernist and more of an organic surrealist modernist in terms of my own taste, and my own passion, and what I go for. And when I’m trying to develop new areas of a market with my team . . . When we’re kind of saying, “You know something this Danish cabinet maker _____________ – there’s only been two of his works that have appeared in America. Wouldn’t it be great to like talk to some folks and see if we can find more of his work and bring it out?” It always seems to fall into that organic kind of aura for me. You know you definitely mind certain fields more and more.

Recorded on: 1/30/08

Transcript: You have to wear a lot of hats when you’re in the auction house. And it’s tough because in many ways I’m a generalist of 20th century design. I mean if you think . . . If you think about it, I am supposed to be able to talk with equal confidence to my clients about a Tiffany lamp, and about Ron __________. And you know that completely goes against the gallery world where you have very much specialists in certain areas; or certainly, you know, in the museum world. So I consider myself to be a faux curator who is kind of imitating what curators do at museums, and what museum directors do. You’re working with your patrons, with your clients. You’re helping them shape their collection. You’re twisting their arm trying to get them to sell something with you. And you’re twisting your arm . . . twisting their arm trying to get them to buy with you. At the same time I’m some sort of, I don’t know, kind of odd wholesaler. You know guys in vans drive up from Indiana with this piece that they found in a garage sale. And I look at it, and I look at it and I select it and I say, “This is gonna do great. This is something that really speaks to me, and I think speaks to the clients. This is a forgotten piece of Noguchi that’s quite rare.” And I guess the other aspect to my job is I am really like a faux editor-in-chief. I am taking everything that I find, I’m editing it. I’m always on deadline. You know an auction catalog has to be out, you know, three to four weeks before the sale. You have a very time-sensitive situation. You can’t dawdle. You can’t delay. You can’t get a deadline . . . a deadline extension. You have to get that magazine out. So I’m a little bit of a hybrid.

Recorded on: 1/30/08

Transcript: The work that I sell for the most part is meant primarily for looking at. Nonetheless, many of our clients . . . Many of our biggest clients at auction are interior designers or interior designers/architects who are both buying furniture for their clients to use to put into the media room, but also serving as curators of their clients’ lifestyle and their clients’ taste. So a . . . I mean one of the . . . If you were to say, “What’s my best seller in my world?” Well bestseller is a Nakashima coffee table. Because here is this gorgeous slab of wood – “the soul of the tree”, as Nakashima famously said – that was created in the ‘60s or the ‘70s. And it was, you know, made by Nakashima and the men and women that work in his studio. And if you were a doctor or a lawyer in Princeton, New Jersey, you drove out there. You bought the coffee table from him, and a year later it was delivered to you. You got sketches of it. He helped you . . . He helped pick out the piece with you. If you look at that, well today’s collector is still using the coffee table in the same way as the first owner is. So when that piece that was, you know . . . is sold by the original owner with me at auction, the person buying it is more than likely putting it in their living room in front of their sofa just like that original client in New Jersey did. And so it is going to be used. And they are going to put, you know, coffee table books on it and do things like that. But there’s still a lot of what I sell today that is more about stand alone kind of sculptural aura, definitely.

Recorded on: 1/30/08

Transcript: I would say that if you’re Jasper Morrison, you are . . . and you’re Tom Dixon, you are truly thinking about how I can change the lives of every person; and how I can introduce something fun, and sharp, and sensible into a London flat; but how perhaps I can get something into a big box retailer and have it trickle down into the heartland. I truly think that there’s certain designers who think that way; who think that they would like to improve on the Post-it note; and they’d like to make it. And when MOMA included the Post-It note as part of the re-launch of their design galleries after the expansion of their space a couple of years ago, they famously put a Post-it note on display. I never went and saw it. It’s funny. But everybody just kept talking about it. “MOMA put a Post-it note up. What’s that worth?” I’m like, “Well what’s a Post-it cost you?” But the point is it’s about improving everyday life . . . lives. On the other hand I absolutely feel that many, many designers . . . I think they’re thinking in the same way that furniture craftsmen thought about. They want to create a beautiful piece. Maybe it’s bespoke. Maybe it’s for their client. And you know the wealthier the client, the better their piece, the more money they can make, you know? And that’s . . . So yeah. Hedge fund . . . That kind of hedge fund cliché in terms of these guys are adding stuff. That said, for all of the heat that my market has generated, and all the press that it has generated, I still feel that the value of what we’re selling is not growing exponentially the way contemporary art does. You know it is one thing to say, “Gosh, in 1996 this table was worth $10,000 and now it’s worth $150,000.” And that does happen in our market. But it’s still a huge difference than . . . from saying, “Gosh, I bought this work of art from Gagosian in 2002 for $150,000 and now it’s worth $2.5 million.”

Recorded on: 1/30/08

Transcript: Nah. No really, I mean it’s funny. I don’t . . . Again, maybe because I don’t think about . . . I don’t think about it enough. It’s funny because I now live in New Jersey, and I you know . . . I just . . . I just moved out there, and I’m experimenting with the great commute. And so I’m taking a train from the outer, still somewhat pastural suburbs into Manhattan. And on that train ride between the towns of Peapack and ___________ Hills, I was looking out the window the other day. And I looked out of the window, and there on the top of this abandoned line of telephone poles that were in between the fields and the kind of no man’s land of the track . . . On these abandoned telephone poles which dated to probably around 1900 were these gorgeous turquoise and jade green colored glass insulators on the poles. And these were what they used to protect the wiring. Now these glass insulators stopped being used in 1915 and 1920 . . . being actively made, and they switched to more . . . you know more modern materials to protect these. And I looked at this absolute, you know, almost . . . You know it predates the machine age. I looked at these glass insulators, and I have been collecting them for years. So to see them out the window still __________, as they would say . . . still in their original moment was just so gratifying. It was like . . . It was like the best moment of the week for me, because although part of me wants to now go out there and climb up the telephone poles and then try and extract them, because I’m like, “No one’s using them. It’s no different from hunting for old bottles in the woods,” you know?

I could be arrested. But you know I have to check with the local Amtrak police there. But I think the thing is that you look at those old insulators on those poles and you see how folks designed something truly beautiful to protect the technology of the time. There was this glass case that went over the one, and it was very about the function because they had to keep the water out to stop the wires from corroding. But these are gorgeous, and I know folks out there who have hundreds, and hundreds, and hundreds of different examples of these glassed in, you know . . . glass pieces. And so seeing something like that, an artifact from the early era . . . Seeing that out in the kind of . . . You know I love looking out of trains because you’re always looking at people’s backyards. And when you look out there and you see these ornaments that served a function made me think about design again in a fresh way. But maybe it made me wanna just go out and get them too. I don’t know. That’s my style.

Recorded on: 1/30/08

Transcript: I think there’s several choices that you can make. On one hand, if you want to kind of acquire the classics of modernism; if you want to participate in the international style; if you want to embrace the __________ house; embrace great American organic design of the ‘50s, and you’re not interested in increasing the value of what you’re acquiring; if you just want to use these great pieces and create a simple modernist lifestyle, then really you can do no wrong with looking at a catalog, you know, from Design Within Reach because what they’re doing is licensing and re-issuing the classics. In some cases they’re selling works that have always been available. I mean the great Barcelona chair by ____________ has been in continuous production since the early 1950s. And so if you buy one from 1955 that the owner can prove was purchased from ____________ in 1955, there’s no fundamental difference in value between that one from ’55 and the one you acquired in 2005. So you’re not purchasing for value. You’re purchasing for the iconography and for the very reason that these pieces have remained in production for so long – because they’re successful; because they’re comfortable; because they’re elegant; because they’re minimalist; because they fit your lifestyle. At the same time if you wanna be more adventuresome . . . I mean by all means I do feel that the way to go about collecting contemporary design is to first go to your local museum shop. I truly believe that . . . You know everyone has written about museum gift shops and how it’s such a valuable aspect of museums’, you know, cash flow. And I think some of the best design pieces can be found in museums that their own design collections aren’t even that prominently featured. I was just in Houston recently at the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston. I’ve been in Milwaukee recently. And all of these little shops have some of the most exquisite pieces. Because frequently the curators of that museum . . . The curator of 20th-century-design is asked to help select the merchandise for the shop. It’s an old museum tradition that goes back to when, in the 1940s, works that were on view in the Organic Designs competition at MOMA, after the competition was over and Saarinen took first place, the pieces went over to Bloomingdale’s where they were placed in the window and sold right out of the window. So there always has been a link between museums and commerce; and between purchasing new design that have been exhibited in museums. So I recommend that. I really think that’s the way to go. Otherwise it’s you know . . . I think the best web site is probably DesignAddict.com in terms of a fundamental listing of the . . . of every designer that’s alive today. Here are their web sites. Here’s how you find out about them. Here are their capsule bios. You know it’s run by a couple in Brussels who have been doing this for 15 years with no profit motive in sight mind you. They’re just doing this for fun, and it’s a site that I go to again and again.

Recorded on: 1/30/08

Transcript: I would absolutely say that it’s . . . it’s all about what Paola Antonelli called the mutant materials aspect of contemporary design. It’s enabling contemporary designers to work in synthesizing materials that they could never have done in the earlier technologies. And it’s also about, of course, the working with CAD. They’re working with computers to create these kind of computer-generated models. That’s certainly what _________ and __________, you know, work in frequently. That said, I myself kind of love the DIY approach to design. I still love designers who are recycling work and doing it in a kind of almost like guerilla style; not taking advantage of today’s technology. A designer that I didn’t mention before that I really should name drop here, because I think he’s also one of the most brilliant guys today, is Tom Dixon who’s based in London. And Tom Dixon in the late ‘80s, when him and Ron __________ were among the group of young guys working in London – almost kind of like the bands that were coming out of London. There was almost like a similar style, you know, between the underground of bands that was coming out of Manchester in the late ‘90s, and the guys working in London in the late ‘80s. But Tom Dixon back in the late ‘80s was recycling old rubber steering wheels and using them as the anchor for his chair, which he then wove basketry on top of to create this fusion of natural materials and recycled auto parts. Dixon, again like Jasper Morrison, is probably one of the most important designers of our times who is not a huge force on the secondary market. You know his work does not get anywhere near the same prices as Marc __________ does. But I think that’s also because he’s dedicated more of his career to creating design programs for companies, and for still working in a bit of that DIY aesthetic really instead of licensing and harnessing these, you know, commercial editions.

Recorded on: 1/30/08

Transcript: I try in my own way, but keep in mind I am, you know, far more of a . . . of a merchant, you know, who is posing as a curator. I’m a faux curator. I am fascinated with finding contemporary designers today who are working in recyclable materials; who are working in a way that’s conscious of our environment; that are creating pieces of furniture that do not add to the problems that we are dealing with. And it’s been something that I think some of the really interesting designers of today have been dealing with for the past 15 years or so. And what some of these designers have chosen to do is create or work in materials in certain aspects of their work that address environmentalism and address the problems we face in terms of renewable resources. But at the same time maybe also create a line of furniture that, you know . . . you know burns up a hell of a lot of petroleum to make; and actually are pieces not created for the masses. I think . . . I think a great example of that would be the ____________ brothers. The ___________ brothers on one hand are absolutely, fundamentally concerned with the social issues that they are surrounded by every day in Brazil where they live and work. And their most iconic design . . . or I should say their . . . probably their most popular chair of the 1990s, the Favela chair, is probably of course a commentary on recycling sheds, you know, from the shanty towns of Sao Paolo. On the other hand they are absolutely, you know, taking stuffed animals which they’re not finding at Goodwill shops; they’re actually buying, you know, box loads of stuffed animals from toy producers which of course cost . . . probably in many ways are not involving recyclable materials. They’re buying these stuffed animals and creating these fetishy chairs for collectors to acquire through galleries and through auction houses in limited editions which are . . . They’re investment pieces that, you know, temporarily can be placed in the kids’ . . . you know the kids’ room by today’s collectors. But they’re investment pieces. And so you have design . . . Designers today, I think, straddle the line. And they maintain separate careers within their overall career. And the better ones have social consciousness, you know, within their work. But oftentimes they have to kind of . . . they have to do both.

Recorded on: 1/30/08

Transcript: I think it really depends because many of the pieces that have become the most iconic works on the auction and private market as opposed to their appearance in kind of, you know, encyclopedic, “What is good design?” manuals are works that were possible commercial failures at the get-go . . . from the get-go; works that were prototypes but were rejected by a mass producer because it was too expensive to produce. They were very personal works that were frequently . . . the artists kept for many, many years. And only after they passed away, their estate sold it to somebody who sold it to somebody, and that’s how we end up with it. So many of the works that we do . . . that are frequently the most, you know, sought after are the mistakes – are the true rarities of the market.

Second of all you have works that were site specific. And one of the most unusual aspects of today’s art market in terms of design is the fact that frequently we’re selling somebody’s dormitory furniture. You know Jean Prouve did incredible installations for dormitories for students in Paris; for employees of Air France who are squatting in the Congo in these Quonset huts that Prouve designed that have become themselves works of art. So we are kind of . . . We’re eluding in a sense – although usually it is the . . . This isn’t a question of stealing antiquities out of the ground. But this is a question of dismantling the past and pulling pieces out of their original intent; and sometimes reshaping them, restoring them, and changing them into sculptures that can be placed into the gallery. So for a committed socialist like Jean Prouve who was a less than adequate business man; and frequently his factory was in financial trouble; who was always thinking in utopian ways how to create mass production furniture for displaced workers for students. I mean if he was alive today to see this work fetishized, repainted, and in some cases rebuilt and turned into sculpture by today’s art market, I mean I can’t imagine what his reaction would be. It’s the opposite of today’s contemporary designers who are very much linked into what we’re doing; and are in many cases creating works of art that are available in addition form; retail through contemporary art gallery like Gagosian here in New York, and are designed to make as much money as possible, and then to increase in value within the next few years.

Recorded on: 1/30/08

Transcript: In my market, no, because people . . . When I . . . When I exhibit my works of contemporary design at Sotheby’s on our kind of, you know, number one space – our 10th floor Richard Gluckman design area where work is meant to appear in a contemporary museum setting, I don’t want people necessarily to touch these works. Every . . . The last couple of seasons we’ve sold these tremendous Ron __________ sculptural masterworks that he produced in the early 1990s; you know where every fingerprint almost gets permanently recorded on that piece; and you know the new collector has to, you know, pay to have everything wiped off again. I mean that’s the opposite of sitting in a chair and being comfortable, isn’t it? I mean it really is . . . It’s all about giving design this high art, you know, high aesthetic kind of aura to it that increases the value.

Recorded on: 1/30/08

Transcript: I think that it’s still absurdly underrated in terms of its market value. I think that what we are seeing now is that in this blurring of boundaries between design, art, and craft, the uncertainties that we all have – the curators and professionals in my field have in branding or typecasting design, art, and craft, and what is it. I mean you can see that in the Museum of Art and Design – their decision to change their name from the American Craft Museum – what we are discovering however, and I think what Europeans are discovering right now is all of these great American furniture designers in the ‘60s and ’70s who in many cases worked in very isolated circumstances – the kind of proverbial hippie in the woods. California had dozens and dozens of brilliant furniture designers who exhibited only in California in the ‘60s and ‘70s. And if they exhibited nationally it was at a place like the Renwick in Washington, D.C. Right now for the first time, I really feel that we are beginning to understand an international, post-war, organic kind of woodworking vibe that is predominantly American but has contributions from France, from Denmark, from Brazil. But it’s the Americans who are being, you know, increasingly sought after. And it’s hilarious that there is five or six furniture designers working in, say, New Hope, Pennsylvania and Lambertville, New Jersey; who, you know, 10 years ago a work by Paul Evans – a guy who worked in New Hope – I mean I couldn’t give the piece away. It would be $2,000, you know, for a sideboard of his that is now worth $250,000. So . . . And who is driving that market? The Europeans.

Recorded on: 1/30/08

Transcript: I would say without a shadow of a doubt it’s a tie between New York and Paris. New York has a long history of collecting 20th century design, because many of the great French designers of the 1920s and 1930s – Rillman, Frank, ____________ – had clients here in New York. And there has . . . New Yorkers have always been Frankofilic. They do not look to Los Angeles to go and acquire work. They look to Paris. And they always look to Paris before they look to London when it comes to acquiring furniture. At the same time Paris isn’t just living off of its reputation. Paris has been at the forefront of the marketing of contemporary design. Many of today’s hybrid contemporary architects/designers – whether it’s someone like Marc _____________ who maintains a resident in Paris, to the great modular architect __________ maintain residences in Paris. Their galleries are there. Their agents are there. So there are some cutting edge collections by such . . . kind of fashion luminaries in Paris like __________ who have maintained Parisian relevance in terms of the market.

Recorded on: 1/30/08

Transcript: I do feel that many of the great American industrial designers of the ‘20s and ‘30s from an era that I call the cocktail modernism, because so much of what they designed was tied up with the idea of Americans getting drunk in their own homes because they couldn’t drink publicly. So an entire era of entertainment style design was created ranging from cocktail shakers to coffee tables. There were designers from this era that were criminally neglected, I think, by later generations of writers and historians – designers like Norman Bel Geddes. Donald Deskey may be a household name, but I think still not appreciated. And at the same time I think that many of the great organic designers of the American post-war era are frequently overlooked. I think that one of the funny things is that some of the famous designers who produced the best design do not have any market value. Because the few things that they did were so perfect that they immediately went into production and have continued in production for 50, 60, 70 years; and thus there is nothing for a collector to acquire. The name that immediately comes to mind is the subject of a groundbreaking show that is currently, I believe, at Cranbrook at Michigan, and that would be Ero Saarinen – Saarinen who’s career was short; whose works of art are icons of the American landscape – whether it’s the arch in St. Louis or the TWA Terminal. His furniture was perfect. There are very few prototypes that exist; very few failures that exist. Everything he did really went into production and stayed in production. And so whether it’s his iconic tulip series, or his grasshopper chair which I have one – it’s still only worth like $1,500 – Saarinen is a criminally underrated designer in my world – the auction world – because there is nothing there to sell. He’s too good. He’s too perfect.

Recorded on: 1/30/08

Transcript: There are really now . . . I would say we have developed over the past five or six years a new canon of modernist and post-war designers whose biggest prices . . . And by big prices I mean $100,000 to about $1.5 million. The $100,000 to $1 million dollar range, we have a whole new stable of post-war and contemporary designers who line up and achieve the same monster records as, you know . . . same major prices as the earliest kind of blue chip designers of the early era. Off the top of my head, there is a group of French architects from the post-war era – Jean Prouve, Charlotte Perriand, to some extent ___________ – who are achieving huge, huge prices at the moment. Anything that is truly organic, there is a trend from the 1930s right through to today in terms of the designers who’ve achieved this kind of organic splendor tend to be the designers who have the highest prices. That’s ____ Noguchi, the great hybrid artist designer. Probably most famously over the last year or two, George Nakashima the great American woodworker who was based in New Hope, Pennsylvania from the late ‘50s until his death in 1990. He might be the most popular designer in the world today in terms of the expansion of his market; the . . . He enjoys the greatest worldwide audience with collectors in France, England, Germany, Switzerland, Japan, Korea, Brazil to go along with his huge following here in America. And then among contemporary designers today, the stars without question when it comes to pricing are . . . It’s Mark ___________ followed by Ron __________. And everybody else is quite a bit further behind.

Recorded on: 1/30/08

Transcript: When I first began putting together catalogs as an assistant to my boss in the mid-1990s, the catalogs were very oriented towards the art nouveau and the art deco aspects of 20th century design. And catalogs were still oriented around the idea that the highest end collectors still acquired curios; the idea that they had glass cases in their living room, and they lined up pieces of specific cameo glass by a French art nouveau designer; or Lalique glass from the 1920s and 1930s, and that kind of idea of compulsive collecting; of having one of everything, I actually believe for the most part is dying with the older generations. The younger generations of collectors in their twenties and thirties, look. There’s always gonna be people who wanna have Pez dispensers and lunch boxes; and the people who are gonna have compulsive, completist style collections. But the vast majority of what I call collectors today are much more influenced by the idea of curating their collection to have the greatest hits or their particular take on that and working it with their interiors. So what drew me to 20th century design was the feeling that modernism wasn’t being properly understood by collectors on the auction market; and that auctions weren’t recognizing the . . . the contributions of modernism; and that for some reason at the highest end, collecting stopped in the late 1920s and 1930s. And so I became focused on developing a market for something that museums had been recognizing for the past 60 years. It wasn’t a question of now today, we play a role in developing contemporary designers literally as they produced their work. But there was so much to be done there over the last 10 years in terms of re-discovering forgotten designers of the ‘40s, ‘50s, ‘60s and ‘70s.

I think that there are fundamental tenets in terms of how design is promoted contemporaneously I guess by the curators who organized shows and exhibitions each decade. It’s always these expositions of the teens and ‘20s and ‘30s that introduced the great designers of that era to a wider audience. And it was always the exhibitions that were held at MOMA in the ‘40s and ‘50s that introduced post-war American modernists to a wider audience; and also introduced them thus to retailers that picked up and produced their furniture for them. Today I think it’s a little more murky because there is so much more coverage, I think, of design in today’s media. And there’s so many different ways to cover design today in the media than there was in the traditional print era. I also think there is a lack of focus now as a result. There are so many fairs; so many different kind of conventions that occur. And frankly museums today are not covering contemporary design in as kind of a rational encyclopedic way as they used to in the 1920s and ‘30s.

Recorded on: 1/30/08