Ahhh, the Bounty of Seattle...

Evidently it took moving to Portland to realize that there was actually a lot of good stuff to be had in Seattle. Now, don't get me wrong, I LOVE living in Portland, and have no desire to move back. However, there's no denying that "pickings" can be a little slim around these parts. At any rate, it seems that every time I end up in Seattle, I'm confronted with more stuff to buy than I can actually afford to buy, and end up filling up a truck or van or whatever it is I have with me (usually, truth be told, our trusty '04 VW Jetta Wagon. It never ceases to amaze me how much crap I can actually cram into that thing).

This time, I had and actual MOVING TRUCK with me (although I opted for the 12' truck instread of the 16'), so I had no choice but to fill the sucker up! The fact that we ended up spending quite a bit more time in Seattle than we had originally intended certainly aided and abetted my eternal quest to buy as much great stuff as I possibly can!

So, without further ado, here are some of the fruits of my labor:

Paul McCobb Planner Group drop leaf/extension dining table. This was in the back room of a shop that I'd never been to. I asked the shop owner if he had any "project pieces" that he'd be interested in unloading, and he said "well, I've got this Paul McCobb table buried in the back room that I've almost totally forgotten about"...and with a little wheeling and dealing, it was loaded onto the truck. This is a great little table, very versatile with its combination of drop leaves and extension leaves. Here is a shot of it fully extended (it has 3 12" center extension leaves in addition to the drop leaves):


I love furniture that can "wear different hats", as it were. This table makes a great little breakfast table with one or both drop leaves dropped, and opens out to practically banquet size with the center leaves in! I can't decide if I want to refinish it BLACK or just DARK brown...




Now, I almost didn't even notice these chairs! If you've ever been to the place where I bought them ( a sprawling, low-cielinged warehouse in the SODO district that redefines the word "cluttered"), you might understand - but the thing is, I thought that they were rattan...and let's just say that I don't DO rattan. That is, until the proprietor of said warehouse gestured in their direction and said "what about these chairs"? To which I retorted, "what about them"? Then I looked a little closer and realized that they were in fact METAL - tubular steel, in fact - and that they would be DYNAMITE with all that icky old green paint stripped off. I had to pay sort of a pretty penny for them, but once I realized their potential, I couldn't let them go.


I normally don't touch console stereos with a 10-foot pole. But this one was so stinkin' cool...and SO stinkin' CHEAP...that I couldn't pass it by. Plus, it's a Grundig, which are at least somewhat collectable. But, what a pretty Art Deco cabinet! It has a mirrored bar on the right side and a pull-out phonograph on the left. The guy I bought it from assured me that it worked, but I still haven't plugged it in to find out for myself. If , I may have bought a pretty 150-lb boat anchor.



Sometimes my absolute favorite things are the most oddball, "ugly duckling" pieces that I see and realize that I can rescue and turn into something fantastic. Such is the case with this table. A totally strange mixture of 1980s, oak, and handcraft, this table is just BEGGING to be refinished super dark, and have its hideous 1/4" smoked glass panels (which you don't see in the pic because I left them in Seattle) replaced with thicker (3/8") clear glass. The thing is just beautifully made, all solid stack-laminated oak, with a swing-up butterfly expansion leaf. The only thing holding it back from greatness is its current golden oakiness, which just SCREAMS...oh...1983. Everything else about it is phenomenal, and I can't wait to get started on the project! Perhaps the funniest thing about this table (from my perspective, anyway) is that the guy I bought it from had it listed on Craigslist in Seattle for over a month for what was, let's just say, an EXTREMELY reasonable price. A price that said "PLEASE get this thing out of my garage TODAY!!" Still, he told me, in that entire time, no one had even so much as called to inquire about it! Even I wasn't quite sure about it from the picture that he had on Craigslist - but once I saw it in person, all doubts left my mind and I grabbed it without hesitation!



Used to be that I was scared to buy a table that was SUPPOSED to have leaves, but that no longer had them. That is, until I made the acquaintance of my fantastic woodworker/refinisher, who does amazing quality work for surprisingly reasonable. Recently I had him make two leaves for a round rosewood table that I had, and finished the leaves in white lacquer (since real rosewood veneer is pretty much impossible to find anymore). The result was so striking that I decided to go out on a (short) limb and buy this little table as well, which, you guessed it, has no leaves.





As you can see, The result is a very different, dramatic look. It will take someone with a certain amount of...shall we say...CHUTZPAH to take on this table - but the person who does is bound to absolutely love it. And in the end, that's really all we can ask for.

Sleepless in Seattle

The title of this post was either going to be "Stranded in Seattle" or "Sleepless in Seattle", but I have opted for the latter, partly because of the cheese factor, and partly because it's 4am, I'm in a hotel room in Seattle, and I can't f*ing sleep!! I'm hardly an insomniac, so I have no idea what's going on. Anyway, we're here because we picked the wrong few days to go visit my folks (who live up in Bellingham, WA). During these days, it did pretty much nothing but rain, rain, rain here in the lovely Pacific NW, so much so that many rivers have flooded, many towns are underwater, and a certain major interstate that happens to be the main direct route from Seattle to Portland (and points beyond) is also, you guessed it, underwater in several areas. If you are a resident of the Pacific NW (or just keep up with local news in the region) you might remember that around this time last year, the EXACT SAME THING happened. I pity the residents of Centralia, who are just getting back on their feet after last year's devastating flood...only to have the same exact thing happen all over again, only WORSE this time. Global warming, anyone???

At any rate, these happenings have left us stranded north of Portland for who knows how long, and we're currently holed up in a hotel room in the U-District (Hotel Deca, if you must know). Kelly found a "last minute special" online to get a good deal on a room here. Although at first the room seemed pretty nice (12th floor, nice view, seemingly decent amenities), we quickly discovered several details that were overlooked, such as the heater and the cold water tap, i.e., neither of them are working. There's also exactly ONE free outlet that a lamp isn't already plugged into, and in the bathroom there's a shelf blocking the outlet so you can't plug in a hair dryer. I will reserve judgment for tomorrow morning when I go downstairs and complain about these issues...but let's just say they'd better be offering us a room upgrade or a steep discount.

Yesterday I did some buying and picked up a few very interesting pieces that I will write about in further detail once we get back home and I can take pictures of them, etc. I also was able to visit with my good friend Kirk Albert at his wonderful shop Great Stuff. When in Seattle, GO SEE HIS SHOP. He probably has the best curated collection of interesting things, found objects and pieces of furniture in the whole Pacific NW. On the way back to drop off the truck at our rental house in Greenwood, I got stuck in one of the more hellacious traffic jams I've ever seen on Aurora Ave. N. It WAS rush hour, but still, it was ridiculous. Turns out there was a stalled car in the left hand lane (the lane I was in the whole time, of course, wondering WHY all the OTHER lanes seemed to be going so much FASTER) about 1/4 mile south of the tunnel. At least there was a good reason for it!

Tomorrow I will make the rounds again and try to scare up some more goodies. I have a 12' Penske truck to fill up, so I hope there's some stuff out there that wants to come home with me! I saw an ad on Craigslist for an estate sale in Magnolia that sounded kind of promising, and while I usually hate estate sales, I know the people running this one, and they do good work, so perhaps I'll be lucky enough to turn up a nugget or two there. The sale actually started Thursday evening, so all the obvious stuff will be sold, but I always say if it's a good enough estate, you can waltz in on the last day and buy great stuff that other people have overlooked.

So...wish us luck, both in finding great things and in getting back home to Portland in a halfway reasonable amount of time.

A random musical coincidence involving The Bevis Frond that probably no one will care about

The back story:
The Bevis Frond are one of my favorite bands. Although they (or, more accurately, HE, as The Bevis Frond is about 98% Nick Saloman) are fairly obscure, they have also been putting out records for a gazillion years and have almost 20 albums out. So, needless to say, they have a fairly devoted, if rather small, fan base, of which I am most definitely one. The Frond have stayed relentlessly independent, never putting out a record on a major label, and never having anything even close to a hit single. However, Nick Saloman did achieve a certain amount of recognition for his collaborations with Mary Lou Lord, a singer/songwriter who received some attention in the mid-late 1990s, and eventually scored a major label deal, and put out "Got No Shadow" in 1998, on WORK records (a subsidiary of Sony). On that record was a tune called "Lights are Changing", which was written by Nick Saloman, and originally appeared on The Bevis Frond's "Tryptich" record (and also on Mary Lou's first, self-titled EP).
The story:
New Year's Eve. I'm driving to the grocery store. The Bevis Frond's "London Stone" (the album and, coincidentally, the song) is in the CD player. I am enjoying. I park, walk into New Seasons, grab my Asiago cheese and start to consider what kind of beer I want. As I'm standing in the beer aisle, pondering my choices, what should start playing over the grocery store music system but Mary Lou Lord's version of "Lights are Changing" (which, as you remember, is a Bevis Frond cover).


WEIRD.

Now, the thing is that there's absolutely no way that an actual Bevis Frond song would get played at New Seasons (while they have a pretty hip selection of music, especially for a grocery store - when was the last time YOU heard "Look Sharp" by Joe Jackson or "Crystal Days" by Echo & the Bunnymen at YOUR local grocery store??). So, as far as this goes, that Mary Lou Lord song is probably as close as anyone's ever gonna get to hearing The Bevis Frond in a grocery store. And I was there, probably the only person in the store who could appreciate the oddness of it all. And I JUST HAPPENED to be listening to The Bevis Frond in my car, 2 minutes before "Lights are Changing" came on over the loudspeakers.


I told you no one would care.

Brilliant Analogy Time, 11:11 PM

So the wife and I were talking about life and such. Talking about how it's easy to get caught up in the idea that work and your financial well-being is the only thing that matters, when there's so many other pieces to a happy life - friends, family, physical health, mental health, etc etc. All of these pieces take time, energy and attention, and it's a hell of a juggling act to try to keep on top of all of them. So - the "brilliant analogy" that came to me is that if all these pieces make up a pie, the financial piece is like the crust of the pie, and everything else is the filling. The pie won't hold together without the crust, but it sure don't taste too good without the filling, either. Food for thought.

The Tallest Man on Earth

So you go to a show to see a guy who's billed as "The Tallest Man on Earth", and naturally, you expect him to be kind of tall, at least, right? Well, not in this case...try maybe 5'6" including a pompadour and black boots. Overall, picture a rockabilly version of Peter Pan with an acoustic guitar slung over his shoulder. He's got a voice that's way bigger than it ought to be, and a fabulous fingerpicking guitar style. He gets loads of comparisons to Bob Dylan, but that's just lazy. Sure, there's some Dylan in there, but overall, he sounds like a young, white, Swedish version of Mississippi John Hurt with a rock n' roll sneer. I had the good fortune to be in the front row of a very intimate venue, watching this guy prowl around the stage, making fabulous music come out of his guitar and shouting and crooning his obtuse lyrics into a mic that was just a little too hot. No matter, it was damn good. Funny to complain that a show that was just voice and guitar was bordering on too loud. Maybe I'm just getting old?

Nugget on a Nugget

This photo titled "nugget on a nugget". Explanation? In the vintage furniture trade, some of us refer to great (valuable) things as "nuggets". When my son was very small, he also struck us as pretty great and valuable, and hence we sometimes referred to him as "the nugget". In this photo, we find our li'l nugget reclining on an extremely rare "PK-41" stool designed by the famed Danish architect Poul Kjaerholm. The story: nearly two years ago, I had the privilege of brokering a fairly large deal (for me, anyway) consisting of Poul Kjaerholm pieces, between a Seattle man and a prominent LA gallery. Although I didn't really ever have contact with most of the pieces involved in the deal, there were 5 PK-41 stools that ended up at my house for a short period of time before they were shipped to the gallery. My son was 8 days old when this picture was taken, and given the perhaps once in a lifetime oppotunity to have a newborn pose on a rare and valuable piece of furniture...well, obviously, I couldn't resist. If you're anything like me, you're probably wondering really how much these things are worth (the stools, not the baby)! Well...first, let's just say that these stools are literally comprised of 2 pieces of steel and a piece of thick leather. Considering this, and their light, airy look and feel, they are also incredibly heavy. Despite all this, you'd probably never guess that on a good day, one of these stools can sell for upwards of $10,000. Needless to say, with the economy the way it is at the moment, today is probably not "a good day". However, in March 2007 (oddly, less than a month before the photo above was taken) the stool pictured to your right sold for $8400 plus comission at Christie's auction in New York. In person, it really is a stunning piece of design. But still, nearly $10,000 for 2 pieces of steel and some leather? Even as long as I've been in the "industry", there are some things I'll probably never understand. This is one of them. Oh, and if you're wondering, our li'l nugget has now turned into this creature, who is now more often referred to as "scamp", or "li'l devil". Just this morning, over breakfast, I noted that living with a 20-month old is not unlike having a very small tornado in your house...all the time. Or perhaps the Tasmanian Devil. It's a damn good thing he's cute.

Rosewood

Some might call Rosewood "the king of exotic woods". Personally I think that would be a little silly, but someone might do it. Not me, though. I just call it "really neat", and have been known to describe certain bits of rosewood that I have come across as "not unlike a goddamn Van Gogh painting". Perhaps the most mystique-enhancing thing about rosewood is that it's an endangered species, and because of this, it's been illegal to import the stuff into the US since 1983. That hasn't stopped some people, of course, and it also hasn't stopped many people in the intervening years from calling some woods that are not in fact rosewood, rosewood. "Real" rosewood - the stuff I'm referring to in this post - comes from South America, mostly Brazil, hence the notation "Brazilian Rosewood" or "Rio Rosewood". This stuff also goes by the local names "Jacaranda" and "Palisander". Most of the impostor strains that I referred to earlier are in fact from Southeast Asia, and are more commonly referred to as "Indian Rosewood". These strains also include woods such as Cocobolo, which, while beautiful in their own right, are NOT rosewood and should not be referred to as such (in my opinion).
Indian rosewood strains tend to have much less active grain than Brazilian rosewood, with fewer "cathedrals" and virtually none of the contrasting sap grain that makes this table so exquisite:



The grain on this table is, in fact, quite unusual, and usually only shows up in high end Brazilian designs such as this. Presumably, not much rosewood of this caliber ever even made it out of Brazil, because despite the plethora of Danish Modern rosewood furniture made in the 1950s and '60s, it's extremely rare to see this type of graining on a Danish (or American, for that matter) rosewood piece. More common, and still quite beautiful, are pieces like this case sofa, designed by Milo Baughman. It's interesting to note that while thousands of these case sofas were produced in the 1970s, the quality of the veneers on them varies WILDLY, from highly figural and orderly, like this one, to crazy and surrealistic (not unlike a Van Gogh painting) to comparatively boring and static. I wonder if Thayer Coggin, the company that made most of these sofas, had a method for dealing with customers who saw a rosewood case sofa with beautiful, figural grain patterns in a showroom, ordered one, and ended up with a sofa that had grain that looked completely unlike the sofa that they saw in the showroom. With the variety that I've seen in these sofas, it really could have been problematic! Pretty much the opposite of the standardization that is desired by most manufacturing businesses!

Currently, I have several rosewood pieces for sale that I'm quite pleased with, as well as several more that are presently on their way out of the refinishing shop.

This dining table boasts a total of three extension leaves (one is pictured), and is almost unbelievably well made, especially by the standards of today's "cardboard" furniture. The construction is rosewood veneer over lumbercore, with solid rosewood legs that feel like baseball bats when you hold them. I've had a lot of Danish rosewood dining tables over the years, but none nicer than this one!







Also available is this rosewood framed mirror, inset with ceramic tiles produced at the Royal Copenhagen factory, and designed by noted Danish ceramicist Nils Thorsson. While the rosewood on this mirror frame isn't necessarily all that spectacular in and of itself, the juxtaposition of it with the abstract tiles (much more often seen on coffee table tops) and the mirror elevate the piece to greatness.

As always, full info on these and many other pieces can be found on our website, http://www.janushome.com. Thanks for reading.

-Jeremy@JanusHome