Janus Home

Perfect Imperfections

2010-09-11T16:49:00.000-07:00

People often ask me, after having spent some time in my store, what my house is like. "You must have some amazing things", they say. To which I respond, "well, yes and no".

Here's the thing. We have a 3-year-old little boy and a cat - neither of which, despite both of their relatively good behavior, are particularly conducive to keeping "museum quality pieces" around the house. Our stuff gets USED, which, more often than not, means that it's more utilitarian than fancy-designer-y. Plus there's the fact that most of the time, when I find a "really great thing", I'd rather sell it and make the money than hold on to it. After all, I'm a dealer, not a collector.

However, there are a few exceptions. For some reason, I'm drawn to flawed pieces - or, as the title of this post implies, "perfect imperfections" (apologies to my friend and colleague Kirk Albert, from whom I've shamelessly nicked this phrase). Part of this is because they are more difficult to sell and inherently worth less than their perfect counterparts, but part of me really does see a certain beauty and accessibility in these flaws.

Some examples: the big, beautiful Robert Sperry bottle form vase that has a broken (albeit professionally repaired) neck. Or the Tapio Wirkkala Jakala bowl that has a barely-perceptible "occlusion" that caused the dealer I bought it from many years ago to sell it to me for half the price of the other, much less interesting, but "perfect" example of this form that he also had for sale.

Or...this Bruno Mathsson Eva armchair.

This chair was a fairly recent buy, acquired from the estate of a sales executive for Artisan House (the maker of Curtis Jere products, among other things - more on this in another post). This was a whole-estate buy. I went to the house, looked everything over, told Karl, the executor of the estate (and the deceased's son) which pieces I wanted and how much I was willing to pay, then let him chew on the figures for a bit.

Not too long after, he called me back and agreed to the prices I had proposed. However, what with one thing and another, it ended up being a few weeks before I got back out to the house to pick everything up. As I was going around the house figuring out how I was going to cram all this stuff into my van, I noticed that the Eva chair, which was previously pristine, had acquired some rather ugly stains.

The ensuing dialogue went something like this.

Me: "Karl?"
Karl: "Yeah?"
Me: "I don't remember this chair having these stains on it before".
Karl: "That's because it didn't".
Me: "Ummmm..."
Karl: "About a week ago, I moved it to that corner where it's sitting right now. Then the roof decided to spring a leak. Right there, in that corner, onto the chair".
Me: "Son of a...."

Karl ended up giving me the chair for half the price we had originally agreed on, and I decided that it fit in quite nicely with my collection of beautiful-but-slightly-damaged pieces. I didn't really have a good place to put it, but I decided that I needed a chair in my office in which to sit and play my guitar. This would be that chair.

Unfortunately, as good looking and comfortable as this chair is, it is a TERRIBLE chair for sitting in and playing guitar. It's way too reclined, the arms do nothing but get in the way, and if you sit forward enough so that you're upright enough to play comfortably, the chair wants to tip forward because it's so lightweight. So, as much as I wanted to make this chair a part of my collection of perfect imperfections, it is now up for sale for someone else to enjoy. Just don't try to play guitar while sitting in it.

Beyond Repair

2010-09-01T22:13:00.000-07:00

When people ask me "can this/that/the other thing" be fixed, my standard response is "anything can be fixed, it's just a matter of how much money you want to spend". Well, anything except this chair.

This, my friends, is the definition of "Beyond Repair".

Almost a Pair of Jens Risom Chairs, A Funny Story, and an Apology.

2010-08-28T14:16:00.000-07:00

First: an apology. Hi! We're still here! Alive and mostly well on our little corner of N. Mississippi Ave, just a few blocks down the hill from all the action. The past few months have been difficult at best, but the worst is behind us and we're more than ready to start a-blogging again - in fact, now more than ever. There are ideas percolating about a special dedicated "vintage stuff" blog with its own URL - but more on that later.

Today, to get things rolling again, I would like to spiel about a funny thing that happened the other day. I pulled into one of my favorite little consignment/thrift store haunts, and I immediately spied a pair of lounge chairs sitting outside that looked an awful lot like they were designed by Jens Risom. Here they are below:

Of course there were no markings on the chairs, so I plopped myself down in one of them (comfy!) and proceeded to consult the interwebs with my handy-dandy smarty-pants phone. A bit of digging revealed that a) they were the wrong kind of wood - if they were real Risoms they would have been walnut, but these looked like lower quality mahogany, or something else; and b) on the real Risom chairs, the arms point INward, whereas the arms on these point OUTward (kind of hard to see in the photo, but take my word for it). The real Risom lounge chair that I was hoping these were is pictured below:
So, having thusly determined the INauthenticity of these chairs (which, regardless of provenance, were still a pretty good deal for someone at the low, low price of $38 each), I went into the store and browsed for a few minutes, and sadly emerged empty-handed. As I was walking back to my car, I noticed a woman giving the chairs a once-over, and taking out her phone to snap a picture. I struck up a conversation with her, mentioning that while they were pretty cool chairs, they weren't the fancy designer chairs that I was hoping that they were.

She said "well, I really like them, but the fabric is hideous and needs to be redone". I said "absolutely. You should buy them and then give them to me to restore", explaining who I was and what I did for a living. She thought for a second and said "wow, that's great, but I don't have a way to get them home - I just live a few blocks away and was on foot". I said "well, why don't you buy them, we can throw them in my van and bring them to your house". She agreed, and the long and the short of it is that they never made it into her house, they stayed in the van and I brought them back to the shop to refinish the frames and have them reupholstered!

A Chair for Mr. Adler

2010-06-09T22:36:00.001-07:00

We were pretty excited when Jonathan Adler's design assistant called us up and said that Mr. Adler wanted to buy our large bronze lounge chair by Warren Platner for Knoll. Excited for one, because, well, it was a pretty expensive chair, and for two, there's a certain cool factor in saying that Jonathan Adler himself owns a chair that we provided and restored!

About that restoration - we found the chair as a bare frame with no upholstery whatsoever, as seen in the above picture. In order to furnish the chair with the appropriate cushion, Mario, our ace upholsterer, had to cut a template out of stiff cardboard so he would have something rigid to attach the foam to. Every stitch on this chair is hand sewn, because there's not a straight line on the entire chair! Mario said that this was one of the most challenging chairs he'd ever done, right up there with an Arne Jacobsen Egg chair.

We can see why - there's nothing about this piece that's straightforward! However, he totally came through and did an amazing job, and the luscious bright orange mohair that Mr. Adler chose to upholster the chair in might have been the perfect choice!

Mario brought the chair over on Tuedsay, and Plycon showed up first thing on Wednesday to pick it up, at which point I realized that I hadn't taken any pics of the finished product! So, while the Plycon guys stood around, I quickly snapped some shots. Apologies that they are not up to our usual standards, but as they say, they're better than nothing!

The chair is currently on its way to Mr. Adler in NYC, here's hoping that he's as pleased with it as we were!

Janus Home is MOVING!

2010-05-27T21:09:00.000-07:00

Yes, you read that right - Janus Home is packing its proverbial bags and boxes and hitting the road. Don't worry, we're not going far - to a different quadrant of the city, yes, but only 10 minutes (OK, 15 in traffic) from our previous location. So, where are we moving? And, perhaps more importantly, WHY are we moving?

To be honest, the main motivating factor is a reduction in overhead. After some serious thought, we decided that we didn't really need all the space that we are paying for in our current location, and that overall, the business needed a re-org. After looking at several potential new spaces, one in particular kept our attention for longer than the others. For one, it's half the price of our current space (and less than half the space, but more on that in a minute). For two, it's located on N. Mississippi Ave (for those of you non-Portlanders reading, N. Mississippi is a hip, happenin' little shopping district that has become extremely popular over the last few years). The best part is that it's not in the busy retail core of N. Mississippi (there's no way we'd be able to get a decent sized space for the price we want to pay anyway), but in the slightly more gritty, still rather industrial area, 4 or 5 blocks south of the main retail core. If you're wondering, the actual address of the new space is 911 N. Monroe St, which is located on Mississippi Ave, 3 blocks south of N. Fremont St.

Now, about that whole "less than half the space" thing. Our current space, counting the upstairs mezzanine, is about 6000 square feet. The new space is...(drumroll, please!)...about 2000 square feet!! Yes, that's 1/3 the space! So, how are we going to fit our entire operation into a space that's 1/3 the size of the old one? Well, truth be told, we haven't really made terribly efficient use of all that square footage in the current space. The upstairs balcony - well, we never really knew quite what to do with it. And the back warehouse? Well, it's certainly been convenient, but it also made it just a little too easy to buy things that maybe we shouldn't have bought, with the thought - "oh, we'll do something with it someday - and in the meantime, it's not like we're short on space!" This has contributed to us accumulating a whole bunch of stuff in the back room that has lots of potential, but that we haven't actually been able to sell!

Plus, our current location on SE Grand Ave, while very centrally located and relatively easy to get to (that is, when the city isn't busy tearing up the entire neighborhood with construction projects, which it has been for the last 6 months or so), was also very hard to see, and for some reason didn't stick in people's mind very well. I don't know how many times people came in the door saying "I've been driving around for 10 minutes trying to find this place!" Hopefully this will not be the case with the new location, as the building is very visible from the street, and we will have good signage on the building as well as sandwich boards out on the street when we're open.

So, apart from the fact that it's much smaller, how will the new location be different from our present one? Well, the main thing is that due to the obvious space constraints, we are going to be MUCH pickier about what we buy! This means that we will be buying fewer things, and consequently, the things that we do buy will have to carry that much more weight! This means that we will no longer settle for buying a piece that's "just OK" (and not totally fabulous) just because it's cheap. This means that, to a much greater extent than we already have been, we will be doing what I refer to as "exercising our 'NO' muscle" (as in, saying "no thank you" to something that someone's offering to sell us if it doesn't quite meet our standards).

In addition, the new shop will operate more as a working studio than a retail store. We will only be open 2 or 3 days a week (yet to be determined), and other times during the week by appointment. There are several reasons for this. First and foremost is that the new space is not actually a retail space. There are no windows to Mississippi, and it's zoned industrial. One enters the building from the rear (facing Monroe St), and rings a buzzer to get in (the entrance is shared with another shop that is strictly a workshop with no retail at all), except on days when we are "officially" open, when we will likely have the door propped open during business hours. Also, we've always felt that operating on a limited retail/by appointment basis would allow us to spend more time consulting with each client without distraction, and helping them to realize the best pieces for their specific situation. We will, of course, continue to grow our online sales as well, focusing more on our own newly re-launched website and less on eBay.

IN THE MEANTIME, please make some time to stop by our CURRENT location, as we have lots of stuff to get rid of before the move! All warehouse "as is" inventory is currently out on the showroom floor, priced as marked, and all regular priced inventory is 25-50% off regular prices! Maybe best of all, we have hundreds of yards of upholstery fabrics that we have reduced to only $5/yd! The sale will continue through at least June 15th, and possibly for the week after that. If you want to keep apprised of everything that's going on with the move and the grand opening of the new space, please go to our website via the link above and sign up for our newsletter! In the meantime, we hope to see you at the sale in the coming weeks!

Great Things are Afoot

2010-05-07T23:31:00.001-07:00

So let's just say it's been a crazy couple of weeks. I had eye surgery. Our new website launched (still needing some revisions, but perfectly functional right now). My trusty assistant, Jared, gave his notice in order to accept his "dream job" at Laika Animation. In interviewing folks for his position, I not only found Clea, my fabulous new assistant (who comes to Portland and us directly from ABC Carpet & Home in NYC), but possibly a skilled upholsterer who might move into our store upstairs, as well as several designers who have expressed an interest in establishing an office in our shop. I couldn't be more pleased to have made the association of all these great new folks, and I feel like it all spells the beginning of a new & exciting chapter of the Janus Home book. Keep a lookout here and on our Facebook page for the play-by-play updates. In the meantime, expect a new, real (i.e. not stopgap, like this one) blog post within the next week. Or two.

The Ridiculous Things that People Do to their Perfectly Good Furniture

2010-04-08T13:09:00.000-07:00

Critiquing people's design choices sometimes involves treading on thin ice. Something that I might think is a great idea might be anathema to someone else, or vice versa. Just because I in my infinite wisdom think that something is great doesn't necessarily mean that anyone else will, and likewise, just because I think something is god-awful doesn't necessarily mean that anyone will share my distaste.

However, having said that, there are some things that people do to their furniture that I really feel would make anyone with any aesthetic sense whatsoever smack their heads and say "what were they thinking??" Case in point: this beautiful Danish teak dining set that we recently acquired, which was...painted...yellow. Sort of a light custardy yellow. Below, you can see some "before" pictures of the chairs. We don't have any "before" pics of the table because we pretty much started stripping it just as soon as it got into the shop.

The person in question must have really HATED the sight of beautiful, glowing teak wood, because while putting paint on is definitely easier than taking it off, painting a big dining set like this is still quite an endeavor. In total, it took us about a week and a half to strip the whole set (for perspective, the table took about a day, the chairs took over a week).

However, it was more than worth it, as thankfully, the teak was in almost perfect condition under all that paint. The only downside is that it was virtually impossible for us to remove all of the paint that had sunk down deep into the pores of the wood, the result being that there are still a few flecks of yellow paint remaining here and there. However, this really doesn't distract from the beauty of the set, as you can see below!

There are several details that I'd like to point out about this set that distinguish it from your "standard" Danish teak dining set. Although it was made by a rather obscure company (Funder-Schmidt & Madsen? Anyone? Anyone??) and I have no idea who designed it, the fact is that some serious thought and consideration was put into the aesthetics of this set. Let's start with the table - note how when the leaves are tucked into the table, the apron of the main table top completely conceals them so if you didn't know any better, you would have no idea that the leaves were even there. Also note how the corner of the table top kicks out at a very subtle angle, and how the leaves are beveled to match that angle exactly when the leaves are pulled out. Nice.

Now, on to the chairs - apart from the obvious fact that some really nice quality teak was used in the making of these chairs,

my absolute favorite detail about them is the fact that the bottom rung on the side of the chairs, in addition to being artfully and seamlessly sculpted into the leg of the chair, actually TAPERS a subtle 1/4" from the back to the front of the chair. At first I thought it was an illusion, but then I measured, and sure enough, the rung measures 1" at the back of the chair, and 3/4" at the front.

Now, this may not seem like all that big of a deal, but in practical terms, it means that each rung of each of these chairs had to be shaped by hand to ensure the accuracy of that detail. These were not chairs that were haphazardly slapped together in some factory - these were lovingly created by some extremely skilled craftsmen.

It always brings me more than a little bit of joy to be able to take great pieces like this that have suffered such indignity and abuse, and restore them to their original glow and beauty (or, as close as we can practically get). This set will always have those few little flecks of paint buried in the pores, but that just adds to the story - or, as we like to say in the business, "it makes it better"!

The Perfect Danish Modern Sofa?

2010-03-29T16:37:00.001-07:00

We have lots of customers coming through the store on a weekly basis looking for "that perfect sofa". Well, folks, here it is!

At 6' long, it's the perfect size; not too big, not too small. It's very comfortable, with clean, simple lines, and very nice teak accents on the arms and front, not to mention the stylish tapered teak legs.

Unfortunately, there's only one of them, so it's first come first serve on this bad boy! And, as ever, we have options for you! Let's just say that Janus Home is NOT like the early Ford Motor Company, where you could have "any color as long as it's black". No, we want your perfect sofa to be YOUR perfect sofa - so, with that in mind, consider these possibilities:

1) - Mostly as is. The original fabric on this sofa is actually not so bad, and although it would definitely benefit from a professional cleaning, it's actually in pretty good shape, and is a nice quality wool. The cushions are currently stuffed with a very low quality, low density foam that we would recommend replacing, which would also serve to give the cushions a fuller look and a firmer sit.

2) - Reupholster! While the fabric is in good shape, it may not be to everyone's taste, and the sofa would really look smashing brought into the 21st century with a modernized fabric. With this option you can choose from our large selection of designer upholstery fabrics, or in the unlikely event that we don't have exactly what you're looking for, you can bring in your own fabric.

3) -The full meal deal - reupholster AND refinish! While the exposed teak arms and trim are in pretty good condition and have a nice patina, they do show some scratches and dings. If you were going to get the sofa reupholstered, we would probably recommend refinishing the wood as well. The catch is, we can't refinish the wood without reupholstering the sofa, because it would be virtually impossible to refinish the wood without damaging the existing upholstery in some way.

So, you may be asking yourself, how much is this perfect Danish sofa? Here's the breakdown.

Option 1: $1550. This option includes having the existing upholstery professionally cleaned and having the cushions re-stuffed with higher quality foam.
Option 2: $2250 PLUS fabric. This option includes having the cushions re-stuffed, as above, and having the sofa reupholstered in fabric of your choice. As an extra incentive to buy fabric from us, we will offer a 30% discount on any of our in-stock fabrics to anyone who chooses this option (this does NOT include DesignTex fabrics).
Option 3: $2350 PLUS fabric. Same as #2 above, except includes refinishing of the teak arms, trim & legs.

Interested?
Give us a jingle; 503.449.5126.
Drop us a line; info@janushome.com
Come on by; 1324 SE Grand Ave, Portland OR, 97214!

Already have your perfect sofa? Pass this along to a friend who doesn't, or leave us a comment and let us know what you think of this one!

Rugs, Rugs, Rugs.

2010-02-23T13:57:00.000-08:00

We all know the conventional wisdom about how a rug "ties a room together" - and unlike a lot of so-called conventional wisdom, this bit is actually true! A rug is usually the furnishing in a room that takes up the most square footage, and is simultaneously the piece that has the ability to take disparate colors and tones from all the other furnishings in a room and tie the whole thing together in a way that makes sense to the eye.

Unfortunately, rugs can also be one of the most difficult pieces of the puzzle to source, especially if one is decorating in a mid-century or modern/contemporary idiom. Although most things that are worth having are expensive, this seems doubly true for rugs. I often hear the same complaint from clients: "we went to XYZ rug store, and there were some beautiful pieces, but everything we liked was over $5,000!"

The paradox with rugs is that it's relatively easy to get fairly nice, decent quality "oriental" rugs (i.e. tribal designs originating mostly from Pakistan or Afghanistan or...dare we say...China) for very reasonable prices (say, $500-1500 for a nice room size rug). While it's certainly possible to integrate a tribal rug into a mid-century modern design scheme, the look is not for everyone.

The next thing that most people decorating in a mid-century scheme tend to investigate, naturally, are the "Rya" wool shag rugs that were produced in Scandinavia in the 1960s and 70s. While these rugs certainly have their appeal in certain situations, they were often executed in rather loud, garish colors that don't always blend well with a contemporary interior circa 2010. These rugs are also very much "of the period", and while it's relatively easy to reupholster or refinish a piece of vintage furniture to bring it into the 21st century, you can't exactly refinish a rug, if you know what I mean.

Then we have the melangs of styles that one is bombarded with upon entry to a contemporary rug store. Although it's certainly possible to find something reasonably priced and tasteful in such an establishment, it's likely to be the exception rather than the rule.

All of this leaves the contemporary rug buyer on a budget with few options, most of them located at the blue and yellow monster known as IKEA. If money is no object, high end manufacturers of custom rugs such as Kasthall will undoubtedly be able to fill the rug void in your life with aplomb. There are also many rug dealers that specialize in beautiful, contemporary hand-knotted Tibetan (or Tibentan-style: these days most "Tibetan" rugs are actually woven in Nepal or India - see Wikipedia for a thorough discussion of the subject) rugs - in the Portland area, we recommend our friends at Kush Hand Knotted Carpets (who, incidentally, just opened a second showroom inside Rejuvenation Hardware), and have a nice variety of gorgeous hand-knotted carpets (as their name implies) to choose from.

However, for those of us not willing to shell out the $5-10k (or much, much more) that is often required to procure a carpet from one of these vendors, we are happy to offer some alternatives. Just in to the Janus Home showroom are six fabulous small to medium room size Danish contemporary rugs that just might satiate the rug craving you've been having such a hard time filling! You can see pictures of all of them below, and then hop on over to our Bond & Bowery showroom to get all the detals (along with all of our other new arrivals)!

New Inventory Roundup!

2010-01-31T15:21:00.000-08:00

New Inventory Roundup

We’ve gotten a bunch of great new stuff in over the last few weeks, and thought the best way to introduce it to everyone (everyone who hasn’t yet become a fan on Facebook, of course, which is the best way to keep abreast of all the cool stuff that comes through our doors on a practically daily basis) would be to round it all up in one blog post! So, here we go.

Pair of E. Gomme/G-Plan mahogany dressers

Although mid century furniture that was made in England tends to not have quite as good a reputation as true “Danish Modern”, these dressers prove the exception to the rule. G-Plan was the range of modern furniture produced in the 1950s and 60s by E. Gomme Ltd., a UK furniture maker that had been in existence since the 1920s. The gold stamps on these dressers, which bear both the "E. Gomme" and "G-Plan" names, mark these as dating from the early '50s. These dressers have a strong Italian influence, have nice sculptural bases, and high quality construction. Refinished, they will be stunners!

Queen size walnut beds

We have two of these fantastic walnut queen size beds, both complete with headboard, footboard and side rails. We are in the process of refinishing one right now. They have beautiful lines, and remind me of George Nakashima’s production work for Widdicomb.

Pair of high back embossed crocodile leather high back lounge chairs by Oly Design Studio

We don’t usually represent contemporary pieces, but sometimes something falls into our lap that’s too fantastic to refuse – like these amazing wingback chairs by Oly Design Studio, one of the foremost names in high end contemporary furniture. These were consigned to us by a couple who purchased them only a few years ago, but since have remodeled and no longer have a good place for them. They retailed for $3200 each, and are literally good as new for $3750 for the pair!

Swedish Industrial Stool

There’s something about Swedish industrial pieces that make them stand out from a lot of the other industrial stuff we come across. So simple, yet so well designed, this little stool is a marvel. Adjusts from 17”-25.5” by means of a lever. Love it!

Machine Age Leather Task Chair

With its ergonomic seat, leather upholstery, and brass tacks, this little chair has all the style you could as for in a vintage secretary/task chair. Great looking and surprisingly comfortable!

Industrial Steel Canister

I’ve been really getting into industrial small stuff lately (as you can see by some of the new listings!), and this one might be my favorite. It’s just so bold and graphic, the colors really pop!

Cast Iron Serving Tray

Keeping with the “industrial small stuff” theme, this has got to be the most impressive serving tray I’ve ever seen. Measuring an impressive 27” x 15” and weighing nearly 25 lbs, this piece is not for the faint of heart!

Hollywood Regency Gold Gilt Faux Bamboo Coffee Table

Then, on the complete other end of the design spectrum, we have this amazing Hollywood Regency coffee table with a gilded iron base and a ¾” thick glass top. The base combines a bamboo motif with a lotus flower, for that final push over the top! Oddly, this table was made in Mexico (instead of Italy as one might expect), but it’s actually much better made and sturdier than many of the Italian gold gilt pieces I’ve seen over the years, which tend to be rather flimsy.

Pair of Sculptural Walnut Laurel Lamps

We tend not to go out on a limb with lighting – but these were just too good to pass up. Laurel definitely put out some sort of ho-hum designs over the years, but these are definitely not one of them – and in our opinion, are in the class of Laurel’s highly collectable Paul Evans-aping brutalist metal lamps.

Sweet pair of “Waffle Glaze” pottery lamps

I love these! The glaze reminds me of those delicious Dutch “Stroopenwafel” cookies. We refinished the wooden bases and finials to give them a little extra pop.

Industrial metal cabinet with finished interior

This piece ended up being QUITE a project. I purchased it a few months ago on my last trip to Seattle. When I bought it, the interior shelving was crude and primitive, and although usable, was not something I wanted to represent. So, we went all out and had all new shelving made. The shelves are made of furniture-grade birch plywood, and the shelf hangers are solid walnut. The shelves themselves are easily removable, and if you needed a few extra inches of clearance to get a large item in there (such as a TV), the walnut shelf hangers are also removable.

2-Tone Walnut Console Table by American of Martinsville

We've had this little guy kicking around for a long time - and I finally decided that it was time it got refinished, and MAN, what a difference! It's previous existence as a boring brownish table has been banished, and now it's truly a potential center of attention for any room!

Well, that about catches us up - although there are a few other pieces that we are working on currently (such as a cute mahigany draw-leaf dining table that we just finished, an awesome little painted steel industrial cabinet on casters that needs to be cleaned and wet-sanded, and a fab pair of 1960s slipper chairs that need complete restoration) that we haven't even had the chance to photograph yet - so keep tabs on the Facebook page to make sure you don't miss anything!

Solid Wood vs. Veneer

2010-01-20T22:42:00.002-08:00

One of the most common questions I get asked on the sales floor of my shop or via internet selling channels is "Is it solid wood?" Usually this is in reference to a dining table or perhaps a sideboard or chest of drawers, and usually the answer is "no, it's a veneer". Evidently, this is usually the WRONG answer, resulting in a downcast look from the in-person customer and a dropping off the face of the earth from the virtual customer.

Just last week, a woman living in NYC emailed to inquire about a specific dining table. After a few emails back and forth, the inevitable question popped up: "Is it solid wood"? I replied "no, it's a veneer". She wrote back "well, we like the look of the table a lot but we're really only looking for tables that are solid wood".

The table in question

Since she had provided me with her phone number, I decided to call her and probe a little bit and see what her her desire for a solid wood table was based on. As I suspected, it turned out that she was under the impression that solid wood tables were somehow "better quality" then their veneered counterparts, and that most pieces made by major Danish designers such as Hans Wegner and Finn Juhl were made from solid wood.

I told her that yes, there is ONE Finn Juhl dining table that I know of that's made from solid teak - however, practically every other mid century dining table that I can think of, even those by big name designers including Juhl and Hans Wegner, are veneered (the glaring exception to this being some 1950s American modern furniture, such as that produced by Heywood Wakefield and designed by Paul McCobb and Russell Wright - but these pieces, although solid wood, were produced from lower cost woods such as maple and birch).

I went on to explain that while solid wood is all very nice in theory, in practice, it really doesn't make that much of a difference when compared to a quality piece of veneered furniture. In fact, if they aren't cared for properly, solid wood tables and case pieces can actually present a problem, in that solid wood is MUCH more prone to warping and cracking than veneered wood. Other than that, the only other real advantage I can think of to solid wood is aesthetic (which, even then, is in the eye of the beholder), and the fact that solid wood pieces are a bit easier to bring back from severe damage than veneered pieces are, since you don't have to worry about sanding through the veneer. However, the process for dealing with severe damage such as a cigarette burn or a deep gouge is exactly the same with a solid wood piece and a veneered piece - you still have to fill the void and color match the fill to the rest of the finish.

So, when dealing with mid century modern furniture, the issue of solid wood vs. veneer is almost a non-issue. Solid wood simply doesn't offer that many advantages, and pieces that are solid wood are not particularly worth more than those of similar quality that are veneered. As I said above, it pretty much boils down to an aesthetic/taste issue more than anything else. By the same token, some people may like teak wood better than walnut, but one is not inherently better or worse than the other.

Having said that, being able to distinguish solid wood furniture from veneered furniture IS a useful skill when looking for vintage furniture for your home, and there are a few simple ways to distinguish between the two (keep in mind that when someone selling a piece of furniture, especially on a venue such as craigslist or eBay, claims that a piece of furniture is solid wood, there's a very good chance that it isn't).

The first (this applies mainly to tables) is the presence of edge banding, as you can see on the detail of a Hans Wegner dining table below:

Edge banding simply serves to cover up the unfinished edge of the piece of veneered wood that comprises the main tabletop. Edge banding can range from as thin as 1/8" up to over 1" in thickness. Thicker edge banding on a table is a definite sign of quality. Even if you didn't know that the table above was designed by Hans Wegner, the fact that it's banded in a 3/4" piece of solid teak would give you a clue to its quality. If a piece of furniture has a bullnose edge like the one on this table, but you can't find any evidence of edge banding, the piece is probably solid wood.

Another very easy way to tell solid wood (once again, mainly for tables) is to look at the underside of the piece - does it look like the same piece of wood as the table top? If not, then it's probably veneered! Veneered tops will usually have a nicer wood on top (such as teak, walnut or rosewood) and a less expensive/less attractive veneer on the bottom.

The third and final way is to look at the edge of the piece of wood and see if the graining on the top carries through on the edge - the way marbling does in a good piece of steak. If this is not the case, you are looking at a veneered piece. Below, you can see the detail of the edge of a solid teak coffee table designed by Finn Juhl to get a visual on what I'm talking about:

While a solid wood piece is not necessarily better or more valuable than a veneered piece of comparable quality, the presence of solid wood in a piece does give you an idea of the quality, even if you don't know anything else about the piece. The fact that a piece is solid wood might also potentially give you a clue that the piece is handmade, or at least custom made, since so few factory made pieces of mid century furniture (apart from the major exceptions, as noted above) were made of solid wood. So, while the presence of solid wood is definitely a tool that you can use to determine the quality of a piece of furniture, it should not be the sole determinant in your search, unless you have very deep pockets and a considerable amount of time on your hands. Likewise, if you unexpectedly find yourself with a piece of solid wood furniture, think of it as a bonus, and a nice selling point if you ever want or need to re-sell the piece!

Even Our Competition Says We're Better

2010-01-03T14:41:00.000-08:00

About a month ago, a client came to us with a Knoll sofa that he wanted to have reupholstered and refinished. See the original sofa below.

From this pic, the sofa doesn't look all that bad, but on closer inspection, the fabric was quite worn and shabby, and the frame was pretty beat up as well. We reupholstered the sofa in fabric that the client provided, and refinished the frame back to a natural walnut. As you can see below, it turned out beautifully.

Naturally, the client was quite pleased with the results. When he came to pick it up, I asked him where had gotten the sofa. He told me, and to my surprise, he had purchased it at another shop in Portland that specializes in mid century modern furniture, and who also have their own upholsterer! I said "well, that's odd, I'm surprised that they didn't just reupholster it themselves". He replied that they had planned to redo it, but that he had found it before they had gotten the chance to do it. I replied "well, even so, I'm surprised that they didn't just have their guy reupholster the sofa for you!", to which he said "well, they're the ones who sent me over to you. They said 'go to Janus Home, their guy does better work than ours'".

I have to admit I was a little speechless, but definitely quite flattered. I certainly believe that my upholsterer does better work than just about anyone else in town, but to have it confirmed by my competition was really quite pleasing.

Which is to say - if you have any old pieces (not just mid century, we can work on antiques as well) that you'd like to breathe new life into, bring them on down! We our fully endorsed by our competition!

RIP Vic Chesnutt: 1964-2009

2009-12-26T13:27:00.000-08:00

Awhile back, I made the declaration that the Janus Home blog would be "all furniture all the time". At the time, I had the intention of starting up a music blog called The Pop Narcotic. Well, 2 posts and about 6 months later, my music blog sits woefully unattended - truth be told, I can barely get it together to update THIS blog on a regular basis. New year's resolution? "WILL UPDATE BLOG ONCE A WEEK. WILL UPDATE BLOG ONCE A WEEK". So, while the ultimate fate of The Pop Narcotic remains undetermined - hopefully one day when I have more time, I will be able to do something with it - something happened a few days ago that I simply can't not write about.

That something was the death, presumably by suicide, of Vic Chesnutt, a brilliant artist who deserved much wider recognition. While he received consistent critical accolades throughout his career, as is often the case, this did very little to increase his sales or turn him into anything other than a cult hero.

If you don't know anything about Vic Chesnutt, never seen him, never heard his music, you should know that the simultaneously most and least important thing about him is that he was a paraplegic with limited use of his hands and arms, left that way at the age of 18 as the result of a car accident. It is the most important thing because it completely changed his life, gave him tremendous obstacles to overcome, and eventually likely led to his death from an overdose of muscle relaxants. It is the least important thing because it seemed to do very little to dampen the man's spirit, or his ability to write and record amazing songs.

I've been lucky enough to see Vic play twice, and the two performances couldn't have been more different. One show was a good show with a full band behind him, the other was simply one of the most inspiring simultaneous displays of human strength and frailty that I've ever seen in my life. At this show, Vic played accompanied only by his primitively strummed acoustic guitar. It was here that I realized the extent of the man's disability - not only was he in a wheelchair due to being paralyzed from the waist down (which I knew), his upper body was partially paralyzed as well, and he could really barely hold his guitar, let alone play it. Despite that, there he was, on stage at the Crocodile Cafe in Seattle, in front of a room full of adoring fans, playing and singing his heart out. While it was an amazing performance, it was also not easy to watch, as the tension between what the man's mind was capable of creating and what his damaged body was able to produce was palpable.

While that show was hardly one of the BEST performances I've ever seen, it was absolutely one of the most MEMORABLE, and likely one that I'll never forget. Vic's lack of fear in getting up onstage with no backing band, presenting himself exactly as he was with no apologies, could simply be filed under "how to be human". His performance was so raw, so unadorned, so unflinching and unapologetic, that one couldn't help but be completely moved by it, practically to tears. Then there's the whole "man, if this guy can get up there in this condition and play these songs in front of all these people, and do it WELL, I have got NOTHING to complain about" thing.

Vic was an artist who could reliably be counted on to put out a new record, whether it was under his own name or a collaboration with other like-minded artists, every few years. While the quality of those records was somewhat variable (I hadn't picked up his two most recent releases, "North Star Deserter" and "At the Cut", because I was rather underwhelmed with his 2006 effort, "Ghetto Bells" - but I hear they're really good, so I need to rectify that), he could always be counted on to make something interesting, even if it may not have been a career highlight. On the subject of career highlights, I think that anyone who is even remotely interested in the singer-songwriter genre, especially if anyone who has an appreciation for twisted, Southern Gothic storytelling, NEEDS to have both "Is the Actor Happy", from 1995, and "Silver Lake", from 2003, in their collection.

It's been said that Vic had been suicidal on and off for most of his life, and that he had tried it more than once. It's hard to glean that from his music, which, while certainly not always chipper, is uniformly enormously full of life. However, it's got to be damn hard to accept a disability that was brought on purely by one's own poor teenage decision making (the accident that crippled him was a one-car accident that was the result of drunk driving). Given what he was able to accomplish despite the odds stacked against him, Vic Chesnutt was truly an inspirational figure, and his tragic passing leaves us with one less astute commentator on the art of being human.

Read more about the career and albums of Vic Chesnutt here.

The Janus Home Holiday Guide to Dining Tables, Pt. 1

2009-11-19T18:50:00.000-08:00

In honor of the impending holiday season, we thought we would take some time to focus on that most important piece of furniture, the dining table. There's a certain je ne sais quoi to a dining table. Part of it is that it's the single piece of furniture that people gather around and eat on. Eating is a big deal, and eating with other people, specifically friends and family, even more so. It's also the centerpiece of a dining room, which sometimes, depending on the layout of the house, can translate into being the centerpiece of the entire house. The point is - dining tables are kind of a big deal - even more so around the holiday season! So, if you're considering thepurchase of a new dining table, there are several things you need to take into account.

Shape. Most dining tables are either round, oval, square, or rectangular. However, when paired with their extension leaves, round tables can become oval and square tables can become rectangular.
Versatility. Some dining tables, such as farm-style tables and most tables with glass or stone tops, are fixed and cannot expand or contract. Others, usually made of wood, havevarious different types of expansion mechanisms, which we will discuss below.
Materials. Wood? Glass? Metal? Stone? Some combination of the above? If wood, what kind of wood?

Perhaps the easiest decision of these to make is shape, as it is largely determined by the shape of your room. In general, rectangular tables are more efficient, space wise, than round or square tables (i.e. you can get more people per square foot around a rectangular table than you can around a round or square table). However, if you have a large square dining room, a big round table might be just the thing you need.

Versatility largely depends on your intended use of the table, and also the space that you have available for the table. Do you have a tiny space, but nevertheless like to entertain and have lots of people over? Then perhaps you would consider a table that breaks down fairly small, but has a number of extension leaves to make it bigger when you are entertaining.

When it comes to leaves, there are several types. You have your basic drop-in extension leaf, where the table pulls apart in the center and one or more leaves simply drop in to make the table bigger. Usually this type of leaf needs to be stored in a closet or somewhere else, although some tables have mechanisms for storing the leaves underneath the table. The advantage to this type of leaf is that sometimes a table like this will have the capacity to get very large, such as the Paul McCobb for Calvin dining set pictured below.

This dining table by Paul McCobb starts out at a very modest 44" round.But, with the addition of 6 12" center extension leaves, the table morphs into a 10' monster, roomy enough to seat 10 comfortably.

Often, a table will actually expand to accept more leaves than actually come with the table - and sometimes leaves get lost, leaving you with a table that will expand to accept leaves, but no actual leaves.

This is a solvable problem, however, because you should be able to find a local carpenter or woodworker who can fashion you a leaf that will fit into the table. Of course, the leaf will probably not match the table exactly, but the fact is that most times when we put leaves in our table to have company over, we put a tablecloth over the table, so the fact that the leaves may not match becomes less of an issue. It's also quite possible to fashion a leaf out of a complementary wood, so that while the leaf may not match, it will contrast nicely with the wood of the table, giving a pleasing aesthetic effect. For instance, just last week, we made a leaf out of poplar wood for a client who purchased a rosewood table from us that had no leaves. The whitish-greenish-yellow of the poplar wood contrasted quite nicely with the purplish brown of the rosewood, and the clients were quite happy!

Another type of leaf that is quote common in mid century tables, especially Danish tables, is the draw leaf. These leaves are stored underneath the main table surface, and pull out from either end of the table by means of runners. This is a very popular design, mainly because it is extremely convenient, as the leaves automatically store right underneath the table. Another advantage of this design is that the leaves are usually very easy to operate, and can be expanded or contracted by one person, making this a smart choice for a single person shopping for a dining table. In contrast, it can sometimes be difficult for one person to pull a table apart to accept a drop-in leaf. Perhaps the only drawback to this type of design is that unlike drop in expansion tables, which can sometimes expand practically to infinity, these tables are limited in the amount which they will expand. However, unless you own a castle and need to seat 24 people comfortably, a large draw-leaf table will usually suffice for the needs of most families. A teak draw-leaf dining table with oak base by Hans Wegner. This view shows the table extended.

A similarly designed teak table by J.L. Moller. The extension leaves fit neatly underneath the main table surface.

One other less common, but still worth mentioning, leaf design is the butterfly leaf. This is a leaf that folds in half and stores under the table, and by means of a mechanical device, pops up when the table is pulled apart. These are very fun, and can be entertaining to your friends and family (especially small children), and also have the advantage of storing underneath the table. The only drawback to this type of leaf is that they are usually limited to a single leaf, so you don't get a whole lot of expansion potential - it is seldom possible to seat more than 8 people at a dining table equipped with a butterfly leaf. A contemporary hand-made Koa wood dining table featuring a butterfly leaf.

However, if you don't plan on entertaining large groups of people, or simply have a small enough space that won't let you open up a big dining table no matter what, a butterfly leaf can be a very viable (not to mention stylish!) option.

Please join us for our next installment, when we will discuss the question of materials. Until then, happy holidays!

The Janus Home Holiday Guide to Dining Tables, Pt. 2.

2009-11-19T18:49:00.000-08:00

As always, thanks for reading, and welcome back to part two of our (admittedly belated) Holiday Guide to Dining Tables!

Now that you've decided on shape and size, it's time to discuss materials. The vast majority of mid century dining tables out there are made of wood. There are many different types of wood used in dining table construction, but for mid century tables, you will find mostly teak, walnut, rosewood, oak, maple, and birch. The type of wood you choose will usually revolve around what else you have in your home, and what type of floor you have. Generally, it's best to choose a wood that will contrast with your floor rather than blend into it. So, if you have light oak hardwood floors, it's maybe not the best idea to get a light oak (or birch or maple for that matter) dining table.

Although other woods such as rosewood, oak and walnut do appear with some frequency in Danish modern dining tables, teak is by far and away the most common wood used. In contrast, it is fairly rare to find a vintage teak table that is made in the USA. In lieu of teak, walnut is seen much more commonly in American mid century dining tables, as is birch and maple. The reasoning for this is pretty simple - walnut, birch and maple are all trees that are found very commonly in many parts of the USA, whereas woods like teak and rosewood are "exotics", found only in parts of the world like India and Southeast Asia. Since the majority of the lumber-producing forests in Europe were cut down hundreds of years ago, Danish furniture makers were unable to rely on indigenous woods as were their American counterparts, which is why exotics like teak and rosewood are much more common in European furniture of the era.

Another thing to keep in mind when considering a wooden dining table is the possibility of having it refinished to a different color. This mainly applies to lighter woods such as birch and maple, which can be stained or lacquered practically any shade or any color you want. While it's not as common to do this to darker woods such as walnut, rosewood and teak, it is possible. It's just that more often than not, these woods have very attractive grain patterns that you wouldn't want to hide under coats of dark stain. In contrast, most lighter woods don't have very exciting grain patterns, so it's no major crime to stain them very dark to achieve a more dramatic effect. A good example of this is the Paul McCobb Planner Group dining table that we refinished and sold awhile back.This table is a great looking, extremely functional table with its combination of drop leaves and center extension leaves. However, the maple wood in its natural state was just a little plain. The ebony stain that we applied to it gave the table a fantastic presence, and made it look just that much more elegant as well.

When choosing a material for your dining table, the most important thing to consider is the other pieces in your home. If you have hardwood floors, a wooden credenza and a wooden china cabinet, you might want to consider a metal and glass table to break up all the wood. Likewise, if you have an extremely clean, modern interior with lots of chrome and leather and polished concrete floors, you might think about a wooden dining set to warm things up a bit.
In the end, if versatility is an issue (the ability to have your table go from small to large), you are most likely going to be stuck with a wooden table. Although expandable glass tables do exist,
they are much less common than their wooden counterparts.

The glass and steel dining table shown below offers a very specific look, and also needs a very large room to live in, measuring in at around 7' x 4'. Although quite attractive, it offers little in the way of versatility.

When putting a room together, perhaps the worst thing you can do is to have everything match. Our brains thrive on contrast and how things play off of each other, and if everything in a room matches perfectly, well, there's no contrast and nothing plays off anything else, and the end result is BO-RING. That's not to say that if you have the opportunity to purchase a matching dining set of table, chairs and sideboard, that you shouldn't do it. If you find such a set that meets your needs - by all means, go for it. However, there's no need to get hung up on whether or not the chairs you buy to go with your table "originally" went with the table. It's also worth noting that many vintage furniture dealers have the rather annoying habit of "marrying" a dining table and set of chairs that don't really go together, trying to sell them as a set, and refusing to "break up the set" when it is pointed out that the table and chairs don't actually even belong together. Which is to say, even if you think you're getting an original set, it may not always be the case.

Of course, you don't want to go overboard and have every piece contrasting wildly with every other piece - that'll just give you a headache. What we're looking for here is a happy medium. Strive to bring different elements together so that they complement each other instead of clash with each other. Keep in mind that materials are only part of the picture - you can draw a room together using pieces made from different materials so long as they all possess a complementary line.

Having said that, the first rule of Interior Design (at least in our book) is that THERE ARE NO RULES! If you play strictly by the "rules", you might never put together this modern industrial dining table with these black lacquered antique French chairs. And that would be a shame!

Happy Holidays!

Zanini de Zanine Caldas at NOHO Modern, 10/23/09

2009-10-31T12:35:00.001-07:00

Last weekend I had the privilege to attend and help out with the setting up of a truly monumental exhibition of the work of a young Brazilian furniture designer and sculptor, Zanini de Zanine Caldas. My close friend Thomas Hayes, owner of the NOHO Modern gallery, along with Zanini, has been working on this exhibition for over two years. It was a truly special experience to contribute, even in a small way, to the success of this show, and to see years of hard work, impeccable craftsmanship, and seemingly insurmountable logistical difficulties finally come to fruition.

Zanini strolling past his Ipe wood hanging bookshelf, the night before the opening.

The work of Zanini is unlike anything I have ever seen. Although he draws considerable inspiration from the work of his father, renowned Brazilian architect and furniture designer Jose Zanine Caldas, Zanini remains true to his quest to be his own man and his own artist, all the while carrying on the considerable legacy of his father, who passed away in 2001 at the age of 82.
Like his father, Zanini works exclusively with salvaged wood, either from trees that have naturally fallen in the Brazilian rain forest, or from houses (sometimes built by his father) that are being torn down or remodeled. Most of his work is done in one of three exotic Brazilian hardwoods - Ipe, Macaranduba or Pequi wood, all of which are some of the most dense, heavy woods on Earth.

The weight of the wood is such that Sofa Curva (pictured above), crafted from a single salvaged Ipe wood beam, weighs over 1 ton, and can only be moved with a forklift.

The simple Ipe wood "deck chairs" (pictured above, with Zanini balanced on top), crafted from a deck that was being torn off a house built by his father, weigh about 75 lbs each.

However, having said that, there is much more to Zanini's work than simple mass. Taking inspiration from his father's body of work, but never outright recreating or copying his designs (which would be impossible, anyway, because each of his father's furniture designs were one of a kind, and created with each specific piece of wood in mind), Zanini's designs are incredibly simple, yet almost mind-bogglingly complex when the work and skill required to tame these incredibly difficult materials is taken into account.

Dining table of Ipe wood and glass. This table, priced at $35,000, was considered by many to be the star of the show.

Zanini was literally raised by his father to be a furniture designer, which has created a certain. Here I would like to quote Thomas' essay in the exhibition catalog: "(Zanini) has such profound respect for his father and his work that his every decision in designing is aimed at two goals. The first is to respect the standards his father set about how to do things with the highest level of mastery, and the second is to create pieces markedly different from his father's work; pieces that could never be confused with them". In these goals, Zanini has also succeeded admirably - one would be hard pressed to confuse Zanini's Inclinida Aperador credenza (pictured below, with Zanini standing atop), or, for that matter, one of his simple, geometric wall sculptures, for the work of his father. At the same time, the lineage and inspiration is obvious.

The same credenza, the night before the show, with wall sculptures scattered on the floor before being hung

The list of sons who have never been able to break out of the shadow of their famous fathers is long and tedious (wherefore art thou, Julian Lennon?), whereas the list of sons of famous fathers who have been able to not only carve out their own space in the same niche occupied by their fathers, but actually thrive in that niche, is much more succinct (continuing on the music analogy, I can only think of one example off the top of my head - Rufus Wainwright - although I'm sure there are others that I'm forgetting about). With this exhibition, Zanini places himself squarely in the latter category. His is a body of work that will ripen with age, along with his worldwide reputation. Although he has already made a bit of a name for himself in his native Brazil, the NOHO exhibition is Zanini's first US show of any size. Considering the sheer quality and singularity of the work, there is no question in my mind that there will be many more to follow.

Zanini de Zanine is showing at NOHO Modern Gallery, 6162 Santa Monica Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90038, now through December 31, 2009.
NOHO Modern on 1stdibs.com
http://www.nohomodern.com

The gallery on opening night.

NOHO Modern gallery owner Thomas Hayes posing with Zanini on opening night.

The Beginnings of Modernism in American Furniture

2009-09-28T22:48:00.001-07:00

Welcome back to our ongoing series, "How to tell Real Vintage Furniture from Contemporary Knockoffs". In our last post, we discussed how to distinguish Danish mid century furniture from American.

Within the realms of Danish and American furniture, there is still a very broad range of possibilities, from the rarest, highest end pieces imaginable, to the lowest end, most commonplace "dime a dozen" factory made furniture.

As an aside, do keep in mind that in this discussion of "low end" vs. "high end" vintage modern furniture, by referring to "low end" furniture, we are not trying to disparage it. We understand that not everyone has the means to be able to afford the desirable, higher end pieces that we like to talk about, and while we may not spend a great deal of time discussing or dealing with the lower end vintage stuff, most of it is still well-made, entirely serviceable furniture that is suitable for use in many living situations.

Also keep in mind that even if you can only afford what we deem to be "lower end" vintage furniture, by choosing this option over some cheaply made, ultimately disposable new piece of furniture, you are participating in "recycling" of the highest order, which is definitely something to be proud of. You can even think of lower end vintage pieces as sort of a "gateway drug" - get started with something easily manageable and easy on the wallet, and graduate little by little to more serious (and more expensive) stuff!

A (very) Brief History of American Modern Furniture
The Modernist movement in US furniture making can be traced to the end of WWII, and the building across the country of countless clean-lined, unfussy ranch-style homes. US furniture makers clearly saw an opportunity to capitalize on this new aesthetic, and started churning out simpler, clean-lined furniture to match this new style of home that was becoming increasingly popular among the middle class.

Although the roots of Modernism can be traced back to Art Deco furniture of the 1920s and 1930s and, more significantly, the "International Style" espoused by European architects like Mies Van der Rohe and Marcel Breuer, it really wasn't until the late 1940s that Modernism really started to catch on in the American public consciousness. Most of the companies that we are going to discuss had been been in existence since the early 20th century, producing mainly antique reproductions. For instance, both Dunbar and Herman Miller had been dabbling in Modernist furniture since the early 1930s, but it wasn't until the mid to late 1940s that both companies decided to turn their backs on the antique reproductions and fully embrace a Modernist aesthetic.Below are two examples of this early "proto-modernism" - a pair of Rosewood chests by Gilbert Rohde for Herman Miller, below, and a desk by Edward Wormley for Dunbar, below that.

At first blush, both of the above pieces could easily be mistaken for Art Deco, but upon further inspection, you will notice the overarching simplicity that defines both of these pieces. The forms are very much rooted in the Art Deco tradition, but the details are very much in the modern idiom.

As Modernism grew and evolved throughout the 1940s and 1950s, certain companies grew to represent a more cutting edge version of modernism, while others, for the most part, stayed fairly close to the more traditional Art Deco influenced styles shown above. In our next post, we will start to explore some of these companies in greater detail.

Sorting the Wheat from the Chaff

2009-09-21T17:33:00.000-07:00

Welcome back to our ongoing series, "How to tell 'Real' Vintage Furniture from Contemporary Knockoffs". So, using the steps outlined in our previous posts in this series (here, here, and here) you've determined that the piece of furniture that you want to buy is in fact vintage. However, just because it's vintage doesn't mean that it's necessarily worth buying - there are many other things to consider before you make the decision to plunk down your hard earned dollars! Today we're going to get started on the discussion of differentiating between "good" vintage and "bad" vintage. This is a fairly deep topic that's worth spending some time on, because it really cuts to the heart of what we vintage decorative arts dealers actually DO for a living.

The funny thing is, whether or not a given object or piece of furniture is "good" or not is largely subjective. However, we are not completely lost at sea with this - there are certain attributes that a piece may or may not have which we can use to determine whether or not it is "good".

Chief among these are

designer provenance (i.e. whether it was designed by a "major" or known designer)
manufacturer provenance (what company made the piece)
overall quality of construction and aesthetic sensibility

When one is unable to determine who the designer or maker of a piece was, we can always fall back on the quality of construction and aesthetic sensibility to make our decision on whether the piece is worth buying.

Names and Faces
As you start shopping for vintage furniture, you will start to notice that there are lots of brand names and designers that get thrown about willy-nilly by people in the know. If you're serious about collecting vintage furniture, one of the first things you're going to want to do is familiarize yourself with some of these names. Brand names, or manufacturers, are generally easier to familiarize one's self with than designers, simply because many pieces of furniture made by a given furniture maker are marked as such.

There are certain manufacturers that are synonymous with high end design, which we will discuss in greater depth in our next post. However, before we get to the discussion of the actual company that manufactured the piece, we're going to want to consider where the piece was actually made. The two main countries that you're likely to see pieces come out of are the USA and Denmark, so those are the two we will focus on here.

As an aside, it should be noted that a certain amount of "Danish Modern" furniture was produced in the other Scandinavian countries (Sweden, Norway and Finland), but the large majority of it was actually made in the tiny country of Denmark (if there was ever a competition for the number of pieces of furniture produced per capita, Denmark would surely take first prize). Although a significant amount of furniture of this era was produced in Sweden, for the most part it is relatively interchangeable with furniture that was actually produced in Denmark.

Here are some key differences between Scandinavian and American mid century furniture

9 times out of 10, if it's made out of teak, it's Scandinavian.
9 times out of 10, if it's made out of walnut, it's American.

At least initially, it can be difficult to tell the difference between teak and walnut. Broadly, walnut will be more brown while teak will be more red. Also, walnut grain tends to be broader and more distinct, while teak is usually tighter with shorter grain marks. Of course there are exceptions, for the most part these rules hold true. We've included images of "typical" teak and walnut grain patterns below:

In mid century furniture, lighter woods such as maple and birch are more commonly associated with American makers. For instance, all Heywood Wakefield furniture produced in the 1940s and 1950s was made from solid American yellow birch, and all Paul McCobb Planner Group furniture was made from solid maple (although it was often stained darker).
Be aware that while the above mentioned woods will cover perhaps 70% of mid century furniture, the remaining 30% is comprised of a sometimes-confusing hodgepodge of different woods such as Rosewood, Mahogany, Oak, Elm, Ash, Cherry, and others. It should also be noted that frequently, lighter woods that have been stained dark will be identified as Walnut by people who don't know any better. However, once you get familiar with what real walnut looks like, it's easy to tell the difference. We will explain these differences in greater depth in a future blog post.

When looking at dressers, American made dressers tend to have deeper drawers than Danish dressers. So much so, that while vintage Danish dressers can be very pretty to look at, they are often not very practical to use because the drawers are so shallow. We have come to the conclusion that in Denmark, they do not store sweaters in dresser drawers.

As a general rule, Danish furniture usually has more "sculptural" qualities than American. For example, consider the two credenzas pictured above. Both are long and low, and basically the same shape. However, notice how the details on the Danish piece are much finer - how the corners are rounded and come together at 45 degree angles, how the legs are nicely shaped and curved so as to flow out of the case rather than just sticking out of it. The handles for the doors are also carved pieces of wood that echo the sculptural qualities present in the rest of the piece. The American piece is much more boxy and workmanlike - compare the corners on the cases of both pieces and you will see the difference.

Stay tuned for our next installment, when we will go into greater detail talking about some of the major American furniture makers that you should know about!

How to tell "Real" Vintage Furniture from Contemporary Knockoffs - Part 2b: Powers of Observation

2009-09-17T15:26:00.000-07:00

Wood Furniture

In our last entry, we discussed using your powers of observation to distinguish real vintage furniture from contemporary knockoffs, with a special focus on upholstered furniture. Today we're going to talk about wooden furniture - tables, dressers, sideboards, desks, what have you.

At one point or another, you may have heard someone say, referring to new furniture, "they don't make 'em like they used to"! This is true of many things in life, but is especially true of wooden furniture! Today, you would have to pay thousands of dollars for a dresser that was built to the same quality standards as the most boring, run of the mill, "nothing special" dresser made 50 years ago. There are many reasons for this - chief among them that wood is simply a lot more expensive than it was 50 years ago! Because of this, in the last 30-40 years, the solid wood or plywood that was common for use in furniture up until the early 1970s, has been largely replaced by particleboard, the bane of modern furniture. The chief advantage of particleboard is that is is cheap. Apart from that, it has very little to recommend it. It's not sturdy, it's heavier than real wood, and if it should ever happen to get wet, it swells up and basically becomes unrepairable.

So, while the presence of particleboard in a piece of wood furniture is not enough to finger it as a contemporary knockoff (since pieces made in the '70s and even '80s do classify as vintage), it is something to keep a lookout for. You will see particleboard mostly in drawer fronts and the tops and sides of case pieces (dressers, sideboards, etc). Once you've sniffed out the presence of particleboard, you also want to take a look at the general quality of construction. Are the drawers made with dovetail joints? a dovetail joint on a dresser drawer

Are the drawer sides made of solid wood? If it's a table, is the top made of solid wood or veneered?

Unless a wooden piece has been refinished, it will likely show many signs of age. These can come in the form of scratches and dings, finish wear, and sun fading. None of these things by themselves will designate a piece as being vintage - after all, a piece that's only 5 years old can definitely be subjected to abuse - but considered together with the quality of construction that we discussed above, taking all these things into account, you're getting close to being able to say that a piece is in fact vintage.

Sun fading, while present in all different kinds of furniture, is usually most prominent on dining tables with leaves. The reason for this is that the main part of the table will be exposed to the sun while the leaves will be stored away in a closet never seeing the light of day (except for a few times a year when they get pulled out for use on holidays, but even then they're usually covered with a tablecloth) - and the end result is that 50 years or so down the line, the leaves look like they did they day they were purchased, and the main table is several shades lighter. There is no way to fix sun fading other than to completely refinish the table and the leaves, so if it's important to you to have leaves that match your table exactly, it's something to be cautious of.

Overall, just keep in mind that a vintage piece of furniture should look old! If it looks too new, and there's no mention of the piece being refinished, odds are good that it IS too new. Stay tuned for our next installment of this series, where we'll discuss how to distinguish higher end vintage pieces from low end or "middle of the road" pieces!

How to tell "Real" Vintage Furniture from Contemporary Knockoffs - Part 2: Powers of Observation

2009-09-14T15:25:00.000-07:00

Upholstered Furniture

In our last post, we discussed various different ways of ascertaining whether or not a piece of vintage furniture that you're considering purchasing is, in fact, vintage, by talking to the seller of the piece. Unfortunately, most of the time when you're out hunting through vintage shops and antique malls, you're usually several steps removed from the original seller, and the people you have access to may or may not have any useful information to impart. In this case, you will have to make a decision based on your own knowledge. However, for the most part, it's actually pretty easy to tell an old thing from a newly produced thing.

First, let's go for the obvious again - does it LOOK old? Upholstery on a vintage piece of furniture should have a certain amount of wear, and may also be in what we could kindly refer to as a "dated" style. There are certain exceptions, such as leather and (especially) vinyl, but even these more durable materials will take on a certain patina over 30 or 40 years that will distinguish it from new. Of course, furniture can be reupholstered, giving new life to old bones. However, once again, this is a fairly expensive process, so if a dealer has gone to the time and expense of having this done, he/she is almost certainly going to mention the fact, and charge a commensurately higher price.

Other things to consider when looking at vintage upholstered furniture are the foam and springs or webbing. A surefire sign that an upholstered chair or sofa is genuinely old is the presence of flattened, hardened or "crunchy" foam. In the worst cases, foam will disintegrate into a foul smelling, noxious powdery substance. If you look at the ground underneath where a chair has been sitting and notice the presence of a yellowish dust, know that a) the foam in the chair has probably gone bad, and b) it's definitely a vintage piece! Of course, just because the foam is still good and pliable in a piece does not mean it's not vintage. For whatever reason, I've seen foam in 50 year old sofas that was just fine, as well as foam in 30 year old sofas that had completely turned to dust. Springs and webbing are another structural component that can help you establish the age of a piece of upholstered furniture. If you sit in a chair and the seat feels overly bouncy, it probably means that the springs have lost their tension over time, and will need to be replaced or at the least re-tied. Likewise, if you turn a chair over and you see rubber webbing that is hard and brittle instead of rubbery and flexible, you know you're definitely dealing with an old piece.

It should be noted that while all of the above issues can help you distinguish a piece of vintage furniture from a contemporary knockoff, they are also all problems that will need to be fixed if you plan on seriously using the piece of furniture. An experienced upholsterer is your ticket to fixing all of these problems. Sometimes the foam/springs/webbing of a piece will have gone bad, but the fabric has held up and does not need to be redone. It is usually possible to replace any of these components without completely reupholstering the piece, which will, of course, lower your cost. However, keep in mind that foam is still fairly expensive. To entirely replace the foam in a piece, you would need to budget between $100-150 for an average lounge chair and $300-400 for an average sofa. So, if you find a sofa for $100 and all it needs is new foam, you could potentially be into a "nearly new" vintage sofa for under $500, which is not too shabby! However, it is important to keep these factors in mind when you're shopping for vintage pieces, because if you're not prepared, the bill at the upholsterer might be a lot more than you bargained for!

Above is a before/after shot of an incredibly Hollywood Regency style slipper chair that we completely restored from thrift-store condition to showroom condition. We refinished the frame and upholstered the chair in a high end Italian cut velvet. Do you have upholstery projects that you've been meaning to get to but haven't found the time or don't have the resources? Let us help! With our extensive collection of "vintage friendly" designer fabrics and our ace upholsterer, we can take your thrift store finds and transform them into pieces that you'll be able to use and enjoy for years to come!

Stay tuned for our next post, coming this Thursday, where we will discuss using your powers of observation to distinguish vintage wooden furniture from contemporary knockoffs!

How to tell "Real" Vintage Furniture from Contemporary Knockoffs - Part 1: Talking to the Seller

2009-09-10T18:30:00.000-07:00

Today in Janus Home's installment series "A Primer on Modern Furniture", we will start a “series within a series”, if you will, on a topic of great value to anyone considering buying modern furniture on the secondary market - "How can I tell 'genuine' mid century modern furniture from contemporary knockoffs"? Although this might seem like a daunting task, there are a few easy tips that we can give you that will make distinguishing the wheat from the chaff much, much easier. We are going to break this down into four separate posts: talking to the seller; powers of observation; commonly reproduced vintage designs; and last but not least, how to distinguish “quality” vintage furniture from lower-end or “middle of the road” vintage.

Part 1: Talking to the seller

Over the last five years or so, a little site called craigslist.org has positively revolutionized the way people buy and sell their stuff (in addition to making the newspaper classified section virtually obsolete!). You can find pretty much anything and everything you’re looking for on Craigslist – if you’re patient enough! It has also made it much easier for a buyer to connect directly with a seller without the intercession of a middleman or dealer. Let's say you're going to look at a pair of chairs that you found on Craigslist, and you want to be sure that they are actually vintage and not purchased last year at Target. The most obvious thing to do is simply to ask the seller where and when they got them! If you're at the seller's house looking at the chairs, and you ask them when and where they got them, and they say "Oh, I got them from my Grandmother and she had them for as long as I can remember", that's obviously a good sign. If they say "we got them at Macy's a few years ago", that's obviously not such a good sign. Admittedly, this is a pretty boneheaded example - however, sometimes the obvious solution to the problem is actually the right solution! It's pretty rare that a private seller of a piece of furniture will deliberately try to pass something off as something it's not, so you can usually get valuable information from them .

Things get a little trickier when you're buying from a resale shop, antique/vintage shop or antique mall. Of these three, the small antique/vintage store owner is most likely to provide you with accurate information about a piece. With an antique mall or a resale shop, it's usually almost impossible to talk to anyone who has any direct connection to the piece. Forget talking to the actual person who owned the piece, at that point you can't even talk to the person who bought it from the original owner! Although it’s something of a long shot, it can’t hurt to ask the antique mall staff if they could contact the dealer whose piece of furniture you’re considering. In any case, it's important to know the reputation of the shop that you're buying from! Talk to your friends and see if they've had any experiences, good or bad, with that particular shop. Social media sites like Twitter can also be a great way to get feedback from people on specific shops. These days, if someone has a genuinely lousy experience somewhere, it can get broadcasted to the web for all to see in a matter of minutes.

So, assuming you’ve exhausted all the possibilities listed above and are still unable to squeeze any pertinent information out of anyone with relation to the piece of furniture you’re interested in…you’ll have to fall back on your powers of observation! Stay tuned for our next installment, which will provide you with some great pointers on how to do just that.

Janus Home Stages a House!

2009-08-28T14:56:00.001-07:00

3205 NE FREMONT ST, PORTLAND, OR 97212

We are very pleased to be finished with our very first home staging job! And what a canvas we had to stage - a 1951 mid-century marvel designed and built by noted Portland architect Kenneth Birkmeier! Although Birkmeier was responsible for quite a few homes in the NE Portland area in the late 1940s-1950s, this particular home has the distinction of being the one that he built for his own family to reside in. Boasting truly stunning south-facing 180 degree views from the floor to ceiling windows in the living room and dining room, this home is enough to make any lover of mid-century style salivate! Anything but your typical ranch home, this one has the loving touch of a craftsman written all over it.

Our take on this home was to bring in elements of vintage style, using all vintage furniture and artwork with a few new accessories to round everything out. This home is glamorous and stately, and we tried to echo that feeling with sophistocated, glamorous, yet practical furnishings that not only look great, but that one could actually live with (imagine that!).

If you're interested in further investigating this home, you can go here. You will also see some "before" pictures and see how it looked like before we got to it (although the living room furniture that you see in these photos, which isn't too bad, was NOT in the home when we started). The home has been open every Sunday for the last few weeks, and we assume this will continue. If you have any specific questions about the home, or would like to arrange a private showing, please contact the listing agent, Carrie Escobar.

Have any comments? We'd love to hear! We are ramping up to launch a full scale staging business focused specifically on mid century homes, so we'd love to hear your feedback! In the meantime, enjoy the pictures, and go check out the house if you are able!

The entryway. Piero Fornasetti poster, Curtis Jere style metal wall sculpture, pair of white cased glass decanters.

Wide angle view of living room. Faux ostrich sofa with cast aluminum legs, pair of button tufted barrel chairs with walnut bases, stainless and brass end table, root coffee table with biomorphic glass top, pair of Walter Von Nessen brass torchieres.

Wide angle view #2 of living room

Living room, incorporating the fantastic view!

Dining room: Paul McCobb Planner Group drop leaf extension dining table, set of 6 stripped steel industrial chairs with leather seats.

Dining room looking into the kitchen.

Dining room view from kitchen.

Master Bedroom. Milo Baughman for Glenn of California king size bed with attached walnut nightstands, Danish shell slipper chair reupholstered in pink silk, Danish teak stacking tables, Bernard Buffet print.

Master Bedroom #2.

Master Bedroom #3.

Master Bathroom/Master Bedroom.

Upstairs bedroom. Paul McCobb Planner Group rod iron & maple bed, Danish prints, Gabbeh rug.

Upstairs bedroom. Edward Wormley for Drexel dresser/sideboard, Gordon Martz for Marshall Studios table lamp, Danish print.

Office (or 3rd bedroom). Walnut executive desk with ebonized top, modernist oil on canvas by Seiker, Victor Vasarely print, Paul Klee print, Danish Modern lounge chair, reupholstered.

Office #2.

Wide angle view of Den. Danish oil on canvas "Abstraktion Over Fra Angeliko", geometric kilim rug, African drum coffee table, pair of walnut benches reupholstered in spring green velvet, abstract pen & ink by Milton Wilson.

Den #2.

Den #3.

A Primer on Modern Furniture - Part 1 of a Series

2009-08-22T14:39:00.001-07:00

Today on the Janus Home blog, we thought we'd take a little time out for some education. We realize that when someone does a web search for "Modern Furniture", they're going to be inundated with hundreds of products from hundreds of shops, all selling different kinds of furniture that they are all labeling "Modern". Because of this, we though it would be beneficial to our readers to get some of the "back story" on modern furniture and design. So, let's begin at the beginning!

What period is Modern furniture from?
Loosely speaking, modern furniture originated with the Bauhaus movement in the 1920s with designers and architects such as Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Marcel Breuer. Although the roots of modern can certainly be traced farther back than this, this is when Modernism truly started to assert itself as a singular style. Looking back at some of the designs produced during this period by the aforementioned designers, and others such as Gerrit Reitveldt and Eileen Gray, one would be hard-pressed to not assume that these were contemporary designs.

Classic chair designs by (L-R) Mies van der Rohe, Gerrit Reitveld and Marcel Breuer.

What is meant by the term "Mid Century"?:

Although Modern had its roots in the 1920s and continued to gather steam in the 1930s and 40s, the post-war period of the late '40s and early '50s is when what we know today as "Mid Century Modern" truly came into its own. Designers such as Charles & Ray Eames, George Nelson and Paul McCobb helped to truly bring modern design into people's homes, with affordable, accessable, high quality pieces of furniture that are still highly desirable and collectable today. The clean lines and lack of fussy ornamentation of this furniture fit right in to the ranch-style homes that were popping up all over the country at this point in time. It was a time for the country to regroup and rebuild after the tragedy and devastation that World War II had wrought, and the clean, fresh designs that these men and women brought to the table fit in perfectly with what Americans were looking for.Designs by (L-R) George Nelson for Herman Miller ("Thin Edge" dresser in teak), Charles & Ray Eames ("Rope Edge" rocker) and Paul McCobb for Calvin (mahogany extention dining table).

Where did Modern Furniture first originate?:
This is a tough question to answer, as there isn't really any one place where the Modern aesthetic first originated. The easiest answer would probably be the USA, but that wouldn't be entirely accurate, because at the same time seeds of Modernist design were sprouting literally all over the Western Hemisphere, from Scandinavia to Germany to the UK to Russia - if not in furniture, than certainly in art and industrial design.

What were it's influences?
Modernist furniture design was clearly influenced by the Modernist period of art and literature, but also certainly by earlier furniture styles, from Art Deco to Shaker to Japanese and Chinese furniture. Modernist designers were fond of taking classical forms and stripping them of all excess decoration and ornament. Paul McCobb's famous Planner Group Windsor Chair is a great example of this, taking its inspiration from a classical antique Windsor chair, and was one of the best-selling chairs of the 1950s. Hans Wegner's "Chinese Chair" and "Papa Bear Chair" are also good examples of classic antique forms given a modern kick in the pants.

(L-R) Paul McCobb's "Planner Group" Windsor chairs, Hans Wegner's "Papa Bear" chair (a modernist adaptation of the classic wingback chair), and Wegner's "Chinese" chair.

Why is it still popular?
Modernist furniture is still popular for the same reasons i became popular in the first place: it is simple, has clean lines, is usually very comfortable and ergonomic, it is built to fit in smaller spaces, and it is, for the most part, extremely well made. One would have to spend thousands of dollars on a new piece of furniture in order to get the quality present in even a garden variety piece of 1950s furniture. When you add this to the fact that so much contemporary furniture out there today is nothing more than a direct ripoff of mid-century designs (how many versions of the iconic "Barcelona" chair are in existence at this point?), investing in real mid-century furniture makes sense in many different ways.

We hope you've enjoyed this first installment of the series, and please check back soon for the next installment, where we'll be discussing how to actually distinguish "real" mid century furniture from contemporary knockoffs!

Set of 4 Rosewood Safari Chairs

2009-07-12T16:36:00.001-07:00

Sometimes I buy pieces and immediately know that I've knocked it out of the park. Other times I buy pieces and 10 minutes later I'm slapping my forehead saying "WHY did I BUY that??" Still other times, and this is probably my favorite, I buy something feeling a bit lukewarm towards it, and it slowly grows on me the longer I have it, until I am totally enamored of the piece. That's what happened with these rosewood safari chairs.

Despite the fact that they are obviously good looking chairs (and surprisingly comfortable), I was not sold immediately. The Safari chair is a fairly common form, and even at its best, has sort of a limited value and saleability. It's sort of an in-between chair - not quite substantial enough to be a lounge chair, but certainly too wide and low to be a dining chair. Also, these chairs were, strangely enough, made in Pakistan, which is not usually known as a destination for fine furniture.

However, the price was right, and I was talked into them. I'm sure glad that the guy I bought them from persevered, because they are now some of my favorite pieces that I've bought in a long time! Once I got them into the store, I started to notice the extremely high quality craftsmanship that went into the creation of these chairs. First off, each chair is comprised of solid rosewood, with nice thick black leather seats and finely made brass fittings. Then I looked closer at the brass fittings and realized...these are hand-hammered, not machine made!

Being that they are safari chairs, they of course break down into 10 sticks and 2 slings each. These chairs take it one step further, however. When I was buying them, the guy who had brought them to me said "you don't want these bags, do you"? "Which bags?", I asked. "These carrying bags. Each chair has it's own little carrying bag". "Are you kidding me??" I stammered. Of course I want them! That's maybe the coolest thing about the chairs!"

So here I am, ready for a day at the beach with my portable rosewood & leather safari chair, complete with carrying bag!

The maker's mark.

Oh boy, more great stuff!

2009-07-05T17:15:00.001-07:00

Some great new pieces that have hit the shop in the last few days!

A very cool studio pottery vase, c. 1970s.

A pair of down-filled cube club chairs by Charles Pfister for Knoll.

A mystery desk lamp that is giving me hives with the effort of trying to identify it. I KNOW I've seen this thing somewhere before!

A beautiful walnut coffee table by T.H. Robsjohn Gibbings for Widdicomb. Currently in the process of refinishing it.

A really gorgeous fused glass vase. This one might be coming home with me!

A California modern split-reed cane and iron table/bench.

AND...last, but not least, a lovely little teak & oak desk chair with rush seat by Aksel Bender Madsen & Eijnar Larsen.

A Chair or a Sculpture? Leather Hoop Chair by Borge Mogensen

2009-07-05T14:16:00.001-07:00

This week I was fortunate enough to acquire the above piece of art, a bent beech and leather lounge chair by Borge Mogensen. This chair has incredible presence, almost like it's a throne for some primitive tribal leader. It demonstrates how the masters of Danish furniture design were able to synthesize different styles with the more traditional "Danish Modern" and create true works of art (see also Hans Wegner's "Chinese Chair" or Finn Juhl's "Chieftan Chair"). Chairs of this quality just exude a certain je ne sais quoi - it's almost as if you can feel the presence of the designer and his intentions for the chair when looking at, and especially sitting in, one of these pieces. Interestingly, while I find this chair to be one of Borge Mogensen's most striking designs, unlike his "Spanish Chair" or "Hunting Chair", it does not seem to have a name. The only instances I've found of the chair refer to it simply as a "lounge chair" or, slightly more helpfully, a "leather and beech hoop chair". There is only one other pair that I can find currently available for sale, priced at a heady $7500 for the pair, which makes this find all the more special.

A Tale of Two Cabinets

2009-06-29T13:00:00.000-07:00

I have two cabinets in my shop. One of them is an overpriced, rusty, crusty, old metal cabinet. The other one is an industrial steel cabinet with great patina that has been carefully preserved (wet sanded and clear coated so it won't rust), and is half the price of what a similar piece might be in a bigger city.
OK, so the catch is (if you haven't figured it out yet) there's only one cabinet, and depending on their point of view and knowledge of the antiques market, people have had VERY different reactions to it. While in truth, no one has outright called it "an overpriced, rusty, crusty, old metal cabinet" (this IS Portland, after all - that would be a VERY un-Portland thing to do), there have definitely been a few incredulous looks from people when informed of the price (which is $550).
On the other hand, there have been others who have said "wow, that's a great price". One guy specifically said "I live in LA and dealers down there are selling cabinets not half as cool as that one for $1200". I guess it all just depends on your point of view.

A Fantastic Pair of Burl/Root Tables (with an Aside on Custom Glass Fabrication)

2009-06-25T13:02:00.000-07:00

These tables were another great Craigslist score. I was sitting in my chair the other night thinking "gee, I haven't looked at Craigslist in a while, I wonder what's out there tonight...", and what was out there, apparently, was these tables (listed, in an incredibly descriptive fashion, as "coffee table set". Hmmm). Chalk up one more score for Craigs Toolbox (the little craigslist viewer that is my secret weapon, find it at www.craigstoolbox.com - I'm not sure if it's still free, but whatever they might be charging for it, IT'S WORTH IT).
As is usually the case with these sorts of things, it was kind of hard to tell how good they were from the pictures, which, naturally, were horrible. The problem with these root tables is that sometimes they are coated in a super thick layer of goopy varnish, which is nearly impossible to strip off given the extremely detailed nature of these beasts. So, dragging my trusty assistant Matt along for the ride, we drove to SW Portland to check these puppies out.
Seeing them in person quickly allayed any fears that I may have had about their condition - these are simply a great pair of tables! The coffee table is 100% killer, with an awesome biomorphic glass top that would cost an ungodly amount of money to have made new. It's a great size, too - definitely substantial, but not so huge as to overwhelm most rooms. The side table is a little odd, size-wise - it would almost be better used as a coffee table with a bigger piece of glass on it. As it is (30" square), it's a bit small for a coffee table and a bit large for an end table - but with a 36-40" round piece of glass, it'd be a great coffee table size.
However, I will leave that up to the new owner. I'm always skittish about having new glass made, especially when it's a sizeable piece that's going to cost a bit of money. Since I sell so much stuff online, there's always the question of whether it's going to be more expensive to ship the glass safely then it would be to have a new piece fabricated at its destination. Shipping glass is always a risky proposition, unless one goes to the extra expense of crating it. So, the end result is usually that I need to leave certain things up to people's imagination - such as the fabrication of expensive pieces of glass.

A curious little chair

2009-06-21T22:00:00.001-07:00

I have to admit, I was kind of on the fence about this chair. It almost verges on '50s kitsch, which, let's just say I'm not very fond of. However, it also had a pretty cool Paul Laszlo/Streamline vibe. The fact that it was big and really comfortable (and kind of weird) sealed the deal, however, and I wrangled it back to the shop. I think it would look pretty amazing redone in mohair - or something totally retarded like fake fur. What do you think?

Paul McCobb Planner Group Dining Table

2009-06-20T14:07:00.000-07:00

I just got this gorgeous Paul McCobb dining table back from my finisher, and I have to say I'm quite pleased with it. This table fell victim to what I'm going to refer to as the "Great Ebony Stain SNAFU of '09". I will explain this in more detail in an upcoming post, but for now let's just say that this table was stripped and sanded one time more than we would have preferred. However, once we finally got the stain right, it came out looking gorgeous. I'm particularly fond of the design of this table, in that it has both drop leaves and center extension leaves, which makes it exceptionally versatile. With all three center leaves in and drop leaves up, the table measures about 7 1/2' long. With center leaves removed and drop leaves down, it measures less than 2'.
Here's the same table (but with only one leaf instead of three), in New York, listed for $3800. I think I'll price mine at around $2300.

To Refinish or Not to Refinish, That is the Question!

2009-06-14T15:42:00.001-07:00

I bought this neat little Scandinavian lounge chair & ottoman from a contact of mine in Seattle a few weeks ago. He sent me a little picture, quoted me a price, I said "yes", and that was that. I'm not sure if he actually told me that it was teak, or if I just assumed it was, but whatever the case, I thought I was getting a teak chair. When I got the chair, I quickly realized...ehhh...it's not teak. It's birch with a sort of teak-ish stain over it.

Now, one of the great things about teak is that it's one of the more forgiving woods out there, and is very easy to refinish, especially if all that was on there in the first place was an oil finish (which is often the case, especially with older pieces). In fact, a lot of times all you really need to do is scrub the thing down with Howard's Feed n' Wax (discussed in depth in an eatlier post) and it's good as new. However, when you've got lighter wood that's been stained dark, you have a slightly more difficult proposition. The old finish and stain need to be stripped off completely before you can go putting a new finish on - and if you're dealing with lighter woods such as Birch or Maple, you have the additional step of staining the wood whatever color you want it before you can put the finish on (unless you want to leave it blonde, which, personally, I very seldom do). I usually like to take light wood and stain it a nice, dark, rich espresso brown - which sometimes becomes problematic, because a lot of light woods simply don't LIKE to be stained dark. There's always the option of using a sprayed finish, but lacking access to a spray booth makes that a more difficult proposition.

So, here I am confronted with a choice: to refinish or not to refinish? The finish on this chair, all things considered, is actually pretty GOOD - certainly in much better condition than the upholstery (or the foam underneath, which has turned to dust). However, even though it could be worse, it's still a 40 year old finish that's a bit faded and kind of an off color. In my opinion, it doesn't really show off the lovely fluid lines of the chair as well as it could - so even though the finsh is really not in bad condition, I'm probably going to bite the bullet and refinish it. Especially since the chair obviously needs to be reupholstered, I think refinishing it will just give it a more finished, complete look.

Most of the time when I get pieces in, it's pretty much a no-brainer as to whether or not they need to be refinished. However, as with life in general, there are sometimes gray areas where you could easily go either way. However, in this case, over the course of writing this post, I think I've pretty much convinced myself that this one would definitely be worth refinishing.

The Janus Home Blog is now ALL FURNITURE ALL THE TIME.

2009-06-07T20:47:00.001-07:00

Yes, friends, I have decided to split up my hopefully interesting yet potentially confusing conflagration of furniture blogging and music blogging into two separate blogs. This blog, Janus Home Vintage, will be devoted to all things furniture related, and all music-and-other-stuff-related ramblings will now be found here at The Pop Narcotic. Enjoy.

Graham Fracha is Good People

2009-05-28T13:48:00.000-07:00

Years ago, my wife and I stumbled upon the paintings of Graham Fracha at Herkimer Coffee, a few blocks from where we lived in Seattle. We fell in love with his colorful, minimalist, playful renderings of groups of houses on Paul Klee-ish abstract landscapes. Alas, we were broke and could not afford to buy one. However, they definitely made an impression. So, I was happy to see that my friend Miles, who owns Ampersand Vintage, was having a showing of Graham's work, once again, a few blocks from my house. So, I went, appreciated Graham's paintings, met Graham, and proceeded to talk with him for the better part of an hour about all sorts of things. So, not only does he make great artwork, he's the rare artist who is a) not at all crazy, and b) an extremely pleasant person. Graham's work is showing at Ampersand all this month, so go check it out if you can.

My favorite thing...this week.

2009-05-22T23:54:00.000-07:00

So last weekend I went up to Seattle to deliver a wedding present to my best friend in the form of a newly reupholstered couch. While I was there, of course I did some shopping. Out of all the stuff I bought, my favorite thing turned out to be this fantastic vintage tripod, which I'm going to have made into a lamp. The top camera-holder gadget (to use a technical term) pops right out, so the conversion will be a cinch. I love its simple, modernist lines, and the slightly industrial yet somehow luxe feel of it. Best of all is the use of mixed metals - copper, chrome and brass. I stood in the dealer's booth for at least 5 minutes debating on whether I should buy it (it was a little spendy), then decided that it was in fact the coolest thing I'd seen in months, and that I couldn't NOT buy it.

To think that everyday utilitarian things used to be made with such care, with such fine materials, with such an eye for aesthetics. Makes one a little nostalgic.

An Awesome Vintage Shelving Unit (for lack of a better term)

2009-05-15T23:19:00.001-07:00

Good god, has it really been almost 10 days since I've posted? I don't have much of an excuse except for the fact that I've been mildly obsessed with buying a new bike - which I did a few days ago (although today I decided that I might need to return it, so it might be a little while before you see me again if I have to resume the search!). However, I did find the time yesterday to pick up this absolutely fantastic vintage shelving unit. I have no idea what it is. It reminds me of Paul McCobb's wrought iron and maple Planner Group pieces, but the construction of the metal stands is all wrong for that. It also vaguely reminds me of the Dutch Tomado shelving units, but I've never seen those with wood shelves (they're always colored metal). The way the legs meet the floor also reminds me of the legs of a Harry Bertoia bench, only upside down. So...really, who knows. It is elegantly simple in its construction - the three metal towers are held together by the X-braces in the back, and the shelves just slide right in. The half-shelf allows for the placement of taller items, and overall it's just a fantastically versatile piece.

It was purchased in San Francisco some 20-odd years ago by the gentleman from whom I bought it (who, it should be noted, had one of the most impeccably decorated homes I've seen in a LONG time - a nice view condo in the Pearl, decked out with Gilbert Rohde dining chairs around a marble Saarinen tulip table, a beautiful Danish rosewood wall unit, a Mies Van der Rohe daybed, and a fantastic mixed media collage by an artist whose name I'm forgetting at the moment (last name Chase), among other goodies). He didn't know much about it either, only that he was sad to see it go - he was only selling it because almost all the wall space in the condo was being used by the aforementioned ginormous rosewood wall unit! As sad as he was to part with it, I'm glad to have it, and look forward to finding it a new home!

The Return of the JL Moller #78 Chairs

2009-05-06T23:52:00.000-07:00

So I got the JL Moller chairs (see below for original post) back from Mario, the Upholsterer this week. The good news: they look fantastic. The bad news: the leather hide that I hoped would cover all 7 Moller chairs and 5 other smaller dining chair seats only covered 6 of the Moller chairs. Minor miscalculation. I guess I should be happy that he was able to do 6 chairs and not just 5! True to form, a designer came in on Monday and ogled the chairs, only to say "they're really beautiful...but I wish you had done them in white!" You can't win.

Restoring a Harry Lunstead Copper Top Coffee Table

2009-04-26T16:50:00.001-07:00

On my last trip to Seattle, I bought a nice coffee table by Harry Lunstead for the bargain price of $50 (I've sold these tables in excellent condition for $600-700 in the past). Although I don't know a whole lot about Lunstead, I do know that he was a furniture designer and builder who was active in Seattle through the 1970s-80s. I don't know if he's still alive (my guess would be no), but I do know that he produced some awesome furniture in his day, and much of it seems to have remained in the Pacific Northwest. Indeed, you'd be hard pressed to find anyone outisde of the Seattle/Portland area who's even heard of the guy.

I happen to believe that that will change before too long, simply because his designs have the quality of being extremely distinctive and unusual, yet beautifully simple at the same time. Lunstead is probably best known for his use of acid-treated copper in his tables - a treatment that I've never seen anyone else use with the same success.

Lunstead also produced a line of bronze tables that had glass tops, as well as case pieces of various descriptions. Although he also produced some stunningly boring office furniture, most of Lunstead's work is interesting and worth looking into. Now is a great time to start collecting Lunstead, if you have an interest, because I believe that interest in his work can only get stronger as time goes on.

So, back to this coffee table that I bought for $50. The reason it was $5o was not because the seller didn't know what he had - he did. However, the table had one major flaw - the clearcoat over the copper was chipped and worn, and needed to be redone. While this may not sound like a big deal, there's more to it than you might think. My main concern was that I had no idea how the treated copper would react to a chemical stripper, or how it would react to standard refinishing equipment like steel wool. However, for $50, I was more than willing to give it a shot.

I had John, my finisher, take a look at it before I took the plunge, and he kind of shrugged his shoulders and said "beats me! You'll just have to try a few things and see what works!". So, I figured "nothing ventured, nothing gained", and poured a dollop of Jasco extra-nasty stripper on the table, and watched happily as the clear coat shriveled up just like it was supposed to, with no ill effect to the copper underneath. So, one problem out of the way, the stripper worked like a charm.

The next problem was how to actually remove the old finish. Normally I use a metal scraper when refinishing wood, so that's what I used on the copper table - scraping very gently so as not to scratch the copper. In this fashion, I was able to remove about 95% of the old clearcoat. However, there was that last 5% that was quite resistant to being removed. Normally at this point with a piece of wood furniture, you would scrub the piece down with lacquer thinner and coarse steel wool to remove the stripper residue, and hopefully get off most of the rest of the finish while you're at it. If you couldn't get it all off this way, no big deal, because whatever didn't come off with the lacquer thinner would get zipped right off as soon as you started sanding the wood.

Unfortunately, sanding was absolutely not an option in this case, and I was uncertain whether I'd even be able to use steel wool on the metal. Sure enough, I tested some 0000 steel wool (the finest grade available) on an inconspicuous spot, and it took the patina right off the metal. Drat. So, I decided to try pouring lacquer thinner over the table top, letting it sit for a minute, then rubbing it vigorously with a rag. This worked reasonably well, so I decided to give this project over to my assistant the next day.

When I came back to the table the next day, the sun was shining directly on the table top through the skylight overhead, and I noticed a zillion little scratches in the metal - from where I had "carefully" removed the old finish with the metal scraper! Yep, shoulda used a plastic scraper! I knew that the direct sunlight was exacerbating the scratches and making them much more visible than they would be under normal inside lighting, so, while I cursed myself a little bit, I hoped that they would get covered up well enough when I put the new clear coat on.

We happened to have a regular kitchen sponge with a scouring surface on it laying around, and Matt (my assistant) decided to try scrubbing the table surface with that and lacquer thinner. This worked pretty well (much better than the rag!) and didn't seem to damage the finish at all, so this is how we got all the little bits of old finish off that didn't want to come with the stripper.

Once we had the table completely stripped, I had to decide on what kind of clear coat to use. Normally with stripped metal furniture, we use sanding sealer (which is basically shellac that's been diluted with denatured alcohol) wiped on with a rag as a clear coat, so that's what I tried at first. However, I quickly realized that I wasn't going to be able to get a smooth enough coat by applying it with a rag. So, I removed the sanding sealer with some denatured alcohol and my new friend the scouring pad, and went searching for my old friend, the Can O' Deft lacquer. Thankfully, I had one laying around, and proceeded to spray on a coat of lacquer, and was immediately greeted with my OTHER old friend, orange peel (a condition that happens to a finish for a number of reasons - usually when it gets put on too thick, or when the surface hasn't been treated properly). Cursing once more, I went searching for the lacquer thinner (dammit! I was just using it a minute ago!). However, happily, by the time I finally found the lacquer thinner, I saw that the orange peel had calmed down quite a bit, and the lacquer was actually laying down very nicely. So, I continued with the first coat, and then laid down a second. The same weird orange peel phenomenon happened with the second coat as well, but once again, it ended up laying down very nicely.

As a bonus, my hope that the final clear coat would render the small scratches that I had made in the metal invisible turned out to be true. So, while the metal isn't perfect, it looks a whole lot better than it did in the first place (of course I forgot to take a picture of the table before I stripped it), and now I'll know EXACTLY how to strip one of these tables if I ever have to do it again. Stripper. Plastic scraper. Lacquer thinner. Scouring pad. Can o' Deft. DONE.

JL Moller #78 Teak Dining Chairs - Or, why I love projects

2009-04-21T22:22:00.000-07:00

On my last trip to Seattle, I bought a set of 7 (yes, 7 - if anyone has a single chair in this model for sale, DO let me know!) fabulous JL Moller #78 dining chairs. If this means absolutely nothing to you, JL Moller is/was one of the more respected makers of Danish furniture. They are probably most famous for their dining chairs, which are notable for their solid teak construction and sculpted frames. The #78 is perhaps the most desirable of Moller's models, with its delicatey sculpted back and nifty pointed "knees". A set of #78 chairs in rosewood might just be the holy grail of Mollers, but these teak chairs aren't too far behind.

Gunk n' grime - nothing a little Feed n' Wax can't take care of!

I bought them from a friend who is also a dealer - who gave me a very good price on them because, as is fairly common with these chairs, the seats need to be redone, which is a reasonably costly proposition. They either need to be rewoven with Danish cord (VERY expensive) or reupholstered in leather (LESS expensive, but still not cheap). The previous owner of these chairs had attempted to re-weave the seats themselves, but let's just say they could have used a little more practice. A few of the chairs were only halfway done, meaning that even if you weren't bothered by a less-than-perfect weaving job, they still needed to be redone.

A less than professional weaving job.

I ordered the leather today (black) and in the meantime we are waxing the frames and pulling off all the old cord (and pulling out all the nails that the cord is held in with. Matt gets all the fun jobs). I will re-post when we get them all ready, they should look fantastic.

3 chairs, stripped, waxed, and ready for their new black leather upholstery.

A $90,000 Desk? Or, How to Turn $90,000 into $100 Over the Course of 38 Years

2009-04-20T18:26:00.001-07:00

About a month ago, I went out to Beaverton to look at a desk that I saw posted on Craigslist. It was advertised as a "Huge Burl Wood Executive Desk with Return" (or something like that). The guy was asking $1000 for it, on the logic that his father had gotten the desk "on sale" in 1971, paying a mere $17,000 for it.

OK - think about that for a second - $17k in '71, when the average price for a HOME was around $25,000. So...let's think about what went into this buying decision - "should I buy this INVESTMENT PROPERTY over here, or this SUPER-HOT DESK over there?"

It probably went nothing like that, but it boggles the mind that someone would pay the equivalent of around $90,000 (according to www.measuringworth.com) for a NEW piece of furniture.

At any rate, I went out to look at the desk. It was MASSIVE, alright, the main desk measures about 8' wide by 4' deep - then there's the return! It had also seen better days - the top needed to be completely refinished, and to make matters worse, there was an area of water damage where main desk surface meets the return where the particleboard (yes, 17,000 1971 dollars for a desk, and the damn thing's made of particleboard!) had swelled up, and because of this, the return would no longer meet up properly with the main desk surface. It also had REALLY HIDEOUS hardware on it.

Despite all this, it was a pretty impressive piece of furniture. When I went out to look at it at first, I told the guy "I don't want to buy it, but if you wanted to put the money into having it restored (we would do the restoration), I will take it on consignment and split it 50/50." He said he'd think about it.

Meanwhile, I kept seeing the desk pop up on Craigslist, with the price steadily getting lower and lower. A few days ago, I saw "$300 or best offer. If no one takes it by Sunday, it's going away". So I thought, what the hell, make an offer. I emailed him and said I'd give him $100 for it. I didn't hear back for a few days, but on Saturday evening, I got a call from him saying "if you can come take it away tomorrow, it's yours". So, I hastily made arrangements for my mover to go pick it up, and now it sits, in several pieces, in my warehouse.

This is a good thing, I think. Once the top is refinished, the hardware is swapped out and the necessary repairs are made, it's going to be a pretty amazing piece - perhaps the ultimate "Power Desk". I mean, admit it, you'd be pretty impressed if you walked into someone's office, and they were sitting behind this incredible 8-foor burl wood monstrosity. And I mean that in the best possible way.

A Reflection on Adulthood via Jawbreaker's "Dear You" LP

2009-04-18T19:46:00.000-07:00

I had the urge to bust out Jawbreaker's "Dear You" this evening, which I haven't listened to in years. Damn good record. As I was listening to the emotional rollercoaster that is the song "I Love You So Much It's Killing Us Both" (now how's THAT for a song title?), I thought to myself "this is great, but it really sounds a little...shall we say...adolescent". Then I thought, "gee, when did this record come out, anyway?" 1995. 14 freaking years ago! That was a bit of a shock in and of itself. Then I thought "well, how old was Blake Schwarzenbach when Dear You came out, anyway?" I did a little looking - he was born in '67, which would make him 28. College years still in fairly recent memory, numerous failed relationships, house parties, and broken friendships passed.
"So", you're thinking, "what's yer point"? Well, here's the thing. I'm 33. I'm married. I have a kid, 2 years old. When I listen to Dear You, it brings back memories, sure, but God, I feel like I'm a WORLD away from the mindset of the guy who wrote those songs. Not like I wrote them, but in my 20s, I was able to identify with Blake's words. In fact, a lot of them cut very close to home. Now, not so much. Not so much at all. Still, I can't help but get a kick out of tunes like "Bad Scene, Everyone's Fault".
I hadn't heard much about Mr. Schwarzenbach recently. His last band, Jets to Brazil, broke up in '03, who knows what he's been up to for the last 5 years. He does have a new band together called Thorns of Life (great name!), and at the ripe old age of 42, he's still bashing out punk rock. However, I kind of doubt that he's writing lines like "I don't think I hate you enough to commit you to me" anymore.

Did you notice how I casually avoided any mention of the fact that I haven't written a blog post in OVER 2 WEEKS? So...uhh...sorry. I'll do better next time. I promise. Lots of posts about furniture to follow.

Friday Night Follies, This Friday, April 3rd, 6-8pm.

2009-03-31T14:36:00.000-07:00

This Friday, April 3rd, 4 antique/vintage furniture shops (including, of course, yours truly) will be participating in a joint sale/walkabout/wine&snackfest that I have dubbed, in shockingly original fashion, "Friday Night Follies"! Participating (in order, south to north) will be:

Bernadette Breu Experience, 1336 SE 6th Ave (corner of 6th & Madison, www.bernadettebreuantiques.com) featuring an endless array of fabulous antiques and decorative items);
Denali International (1338 SE Grand, featuring imported Chinese furniture, their new line of handmade industrial furnishings, and every now and then a vintage piece or two);
Janus Home (1324 SE Grand Ave, www.janushome.com, featuring World Class Vintage Furnishings) and
Simply Grand Antiques (1226 SE Grand Ave, www.simplygrandantiques.com featuring 10,000 SF of 19th-20th century European antiques).

For my part, everything in the store will be 20% off, with select merchandise up to 50% off! I don't know the exact specifics of what everyone else is doing as far as discounts go (although Bernadette mentioned 50% off lots of stuff), but regardless, it will definitely be worth your time to come down and come see what we all have to offer (and...um...drink some wine. On us. Not that we're bribing or anything).

The '80s Ain't Always Such a Bad Thing - Burl Bedroom Furniture by Hickory

2009-03-29T16:53:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, I bought these two lovely pieces of bedroom furniture, produced by the Hickory Manufacturing Co., likely sometime in the 1980s. Hickory is one of those "Grand Old" American furniture companies along the lines of Baker or Thomasville that have been around forever (or since 1911, in Hickory's case) in one form or another. Today they are owned by uber-mega-conglomerate Furniture Brands International (which, incidentally, also owns Thomasville), but they still put out a very high end, quality product.

These dressers are a testament to the quality of furniture that Hickory produces, even in the "dark days" of the 1980s, when even many major "high end" furniture makers were turning out loads of processed particleboard crap. It should be noted that there is not a bit of particleboard in these pieces - they are made of 100% solid wood (veneered, of course, but solid wood under the veneer). It should also be noted that the long dresser, despite its lack of particleboard (which is much heavier than regular wood) is INCREDIBLY heavy, easily 200 lbs if not more. If the current prices of Hickory's furniture is any indication, these pieces must have cost thousands of 1980s dollars when they were new.

The finish on them is good - but boy, would they be stunning if they were refinished. I can see the wood bleached and clearcoated, and the hardware darkened, or perhaps have the hardware chromed and refinish the wood dark. Either way it would be worth it, as these are stylish, attractive, bombporoof pieces of furniture that will literally last a lifetime any way you cut it.

Pair of Hans Wegner for Johannes Hansen folding chairs

2009-03-20T22:17:00.001-07:00

I knew these chairs were good...but I had no idea HOW good! I figured the pair was good for a few thousand bucks, maybe a little more...turns out that two pairs have sold in the last two years at the Wright 20 auction for $22,800! Odd that both sets should sell for the exact same amount, but there you go. Interestingly enough, there's ANOTHER pair set to sell at Wright this Tuesday! The estimate is $10000-15000, I'll be very curious to see what they actually go for. Here's a link to the listing on my website, and here are some more photos of the lovely specimens.

Before and After Stories

2009-03-18T22:29:00.000-07:00

I think that the most fun part of my job is taking burnt-out husks of vintage furniture that just happen to have great lines, and breathing new life into them, readying them for another 50 years of life on the planet (and diverting them from clogging up a landfill)! I've collected a few "before and after" stories for your perusal here. The first is a pair of Hollywood Regency style slipper chairs that I picked up at a local consignment store. Many times when I buy pieces "as is", I don't really have any grand plans for what they will eventually turn into. However, these chairs were an exception - I pretty much knew from the get-go that I wanted to refinish the frames dark and reupholster them in a fancy high end fabric. I went through a few options, but the Italian cut velvet that I picked seemed to be the obvious choice (you can even see that I had a swatch of it laid out on the chairs before they were reupholstered). I was really happy with how they turned out, and they sold pretty quickly.

Next up we have a pair of Danish chair frames that I bought in Austin, TX along with a bunch of other stuff. I really had no idea what I wanted to do with these. However, I figured that since I hadn't paid much for them, I wanted to go a bit out on a limb and do something a little "different". I had them lacquered white, and awhile after that, I found this Clarence House linen on deep discount at an online fabric retailer, and thought "that would be PERFECT for those white chairs!" I hadn't really counted on the fact that they would end up looking like beach balls, but what the hell. I still think they're pretty cool. My designer friend/client Martie Accuardi said "I would totally buy those if I had a beach house project!" Taking Danish modern to the beach - what will they come up with next?

Looking for Partners to Feature on janushome.com

2009-03-16T22:22:00.000-07:00

I'm looking for local PDX retailers who sell things that I don't sell, but that would fit in with the Janus Home design aesthetic (clean, modern, sustainable) to feature on the Janus Home website. The idea is that we would do a photo shoot at Janus Home using Janus Home's furniture, and integrate these other things into the shoot to round out the look. There would then be text explaining where the pieces came from, and a link on janushome.com leading to the vendor's website.

We will be shooting four different "rooms", each in a different style. We are planning on shooting the following looks - "clean" modern, "family friendly" modern, industrial loft, and Hollywood Regency - but nothing is set in stone. There will likely be some intermixing of the looks as well, just to keep things interesting.

I hope this makes sense - if there is confusion, please feel free to shoot me an email and I will try to explain further.

Stravacado Salsa

2009-03-09T22:33:00.001-07:00

OK, OK, I know this is not a food blog...and I'm not trying to make it one. I'm just so fired up about this salsa that I had to share it with the world (or...er...the 7 people following me). Anyway, this all came up because I had to go to the store to get lentils and diapers. So I went to New Seasons, which is pretty much the best grocery store one could hope to live 3 blocks away from. Sometimes they have a little sample treats stand set up near the entrance of the store, and this evening they were sampling a Strawberry-Avocado Salsa. I tried it. It was yum. I tried it again just to make sure. I was not mistaken the first time. I remembered that we had a bowl of strawberries at home that looked like they were on there way out and were just dying to be turned into salsa...so a plan was made.

This stuff is amazing, I can't stop eating it. The recipe below will make enough to feed a small army. I made 1/4 the recipe (using 1 avocado instead of 4), and made a decent sized bowl that would probably be enough for most small gatherings (I thought about it for a minute, and, well, I DID get this recipe at a grocery store, so OF COURSE they want you to buy 3 pints of strawberries and 4 avocados). Anyway, without further ado, here is the recipe:

3 pints of strawberries
4 ripe avocados
1 red onion
2 limes
1 jalapeno
1 bunch of cilantro
Salt to taste

Mash your avocados in a bowl. Chop your strawberries, onions, cilantro and jalapeno and mix in with the avocado. Squeeze the limes in there. Salt to taste. Dig out your favorite bag of tortilla chips. Prepare yourself for an addictive snacking experience.
*DON'T* do like I did and make up the salsa while you're waiting for dinner to finish cooking, and then eat so much of it that you don't want dinner anymore.

Thank You John Birch

2009-03-09T14:33:00.000-07:00

Sold the desk chair less than 24 hours after I listed it on eBay. Thank you John Birch (if you don't know, and there's no particular reason that you should, John Birch runs a shop in NYC called Wyeth and is one of the top dealers of high end mid century design in the country). This means that either he just liked it a whole lot, or I screwed up and it's some rare design from someone important. Whatever, I sold it fast and made a nice profit, that's what counts.

Fabulous Fabulosity

2009-03-08T23:12:00.001-07:00

Great things have come my way this week, and it is my intention to share them with y'all. So...without further ado...may I present...BRUCE WAYNE'S DESK CHAIR!
I've had some pretty cool desk chairs in the past, but I think this one might just take the cake. "Sick in the pants", as some guy I used to know whose name I can't remember would say. Evidently this beauty was originally upholstered in turquoise leather. I mean, SHUT UP. Now it's dark red vinyl...which is OK, but TURQUOISE LEATHER?? Out of control cool. I wish I knew who designed it, but I honestly have no clue. I swear I've seen a Dunbar desk chair that bore some resemblance to this, but now I can't find any reference to it (of course). It also has some Jens Risom-ish qualities, but let's face it, this thing it just in a class of it's own.

Up next we have a wacky, wonderful collector's item - a bent rosewood coffee table by Saburo Inui for Tendo. Never heard of him? Well, to be honest, neither had I, until I saw this gem on Craigslist and did a little creative research, and found the attribution - and saw that one had sold at the Wright auction back in 2005 for a little over $3k. Needless to say I snapped it up. Here's a shot of the top - very nice rosewood grain, and the way the legs bend and splay out is just subtly delicious. I was showing it off today to John, my ace finisher and repair guy, and he thumped on it and said "hmm - it's hollow!" The table probably doesn't even weigh 20 lbs, so this observation made sense - then he added "you know, like an interior hollow-core door!" I had to laugh at that - "a very fancy interior hollow core door that's hopefully worth about $3000!"

I don't get down to the Stars Antique Mall all that much - mainly because I'm hardly ever in Sellwood, and also because I've never really found much there that was worth buying. There's a few dealers who have interesting stuff (one of whom, I found out to my chagrin, is moving out), but mostly it's just a bunch of Grandma antiques (no offense meant to any hip Grandmas out there). However, they were having a storewide sale to coincide with the pain-fest that is the Portland Expo (and I was on my way to Lake Oswego to buy some nightstands), so I stopped in and snooped. I'll save my favorite piece for last, but these tables have a funny story. I'd taken a very quick spin around the mall and, to my surprise, I actually found some goodies. I took my finds up to the cash register, paid for them, and was on my way out the door, when I realized I had a need to use the restroom. I turned around, put my stuff back down, and headed down the aisle toward the restroom - and ran smack dab into these babies. Oh, and a matching coffee table too! The price was VERY right, and they were even 25% off, so I basically had no choice but to add them to the pile. I like the end tables a little better than the coffee table, but really, who's counting, they're both super cool!

And now, for my favorite piece of the week: may I present. "Dude with Spear".One of my favorite dealers at Stars always has the most random assortment of stuff - art, found objects, weird furniture that may or may not be missing essential pieces, sculptures, you name it. He also has a penchant for very direct, to the point, no-nonsense tagging of his pieces - for instance, this fellow, who was aptly and simply dubbed "Dude with Spear". I mean, how can you not love that? Our dude is about 2.5' tall, and really has quite a presence.

Now...why is he my favorite? He certainly isn't the piece that I'm going to make the most money on, or has the most significance in any way - and I certainly can't take him home, for fear that my 2-year old would very quickly injure either himself or someone or something else with it (this is a boy who has a honing instinct to grab the most dangerous object in the whole house that happens to be accessable to him within 30 seconds of one of his parents turning their backs). So, why is he my favorite? I just like him, that's why! He's got soul. And when it comes down to it, I really believe that THAT is the most important piece of the decorating puzzle that often gets minimized in the interest of flashier talking points - do you LIKE the damn thing? Does it resonate with you? Does it make you smile? For me, "Dude with Spear" scores a 3/3 on that list, so he gets the nod. Plus, he's more than a little eccentric and offbeat, which is also something that I feel is sorely lacking in many modern interiors. Get over yourselves, people, and have some fun with this whole decorating thing!

If you couldn't tell by my rambling, it is now quite late and I must be off to bed. Until next time, thanks for reading, and please do leave your comments if anything strikes you!

A Robsjohn Gibbings King Size Headboard that is Unfortunately Painted Black

2009-03-01T21:59:00.000-08:00

Today, against my better judgment, I bought this here king size headboard, designed by the one and only T.H. Robsjohn Gibbings for Widdicomb. It's really a beautiful thing, but I'm absolutely dreading the stripping and refinishing of it. Maybe it won't be as bad as I think, but when does that ever happen? We're currently working on a Gibbings desk that has proven to be an absolute NIGHTMARE, so I'm not really excited about the prospect of redoing this one. At least it was cheap.

Ampersand Vintage

2009-02-28T13:44:00.000-08:00

Sometimes you walk into a retail shop, look around, and think to yourself, "DAMN, whoever owns this shop has got it TOGETHER". That's what happened the first time I walked into Ampersand Vintage, a new, smallish, immaculate book/ephemera shop on NE Alberta St here in Portland.

Then, imagine my surprise when I looked up and realized that I KNEW the guy behind the counter! Myles Haselhorst is a fellow Seattle transplant, although I had no idea that he'd relocated to PDX. I knew him from when he used to sell books and other random vintage stuff at the Fremont Sunday Market in Seattle. However, his flea market stand certainly gave me no preparation whatsoever for how cool his shop is.

The thing that makes Ampersand so fabulous, and makes me want to write about it on my blog, is not just the fact that they have cool stuff to look at and to buy (which they certainly do). It's that pretty much every aspect of this little shop, from the graphic design of the business cards and the website to the mixture of new bookshelves make by Nathan from Kerf Design and old lawyers' bookcases, to the way the art is hung on the walls, is (or appears to be, anyway) completely INTENTIONAL. It's as if the complete idea for the shop and all of its accoutrements sprung fully formed one day from Myles' head. It comes across as this seamless expression of one person's passion, and every little detail is just perfectly executed. For a shop that's pretty much brand new, opened by a guy who (as far as I know) has never operated a retail shop before, this level of professionalism is pretty much mindblowing.

In fact, I think I'm a little jealous. I look at Myles' shop, and think about the feeling that I get whenever I walk in there (everything is just so, perfectly placed, and has a reason for being there), and think to myself "do people get that feeling when they walk into my shop? Feel free to comment and let me know! ;-)

The Wonders of Howard's Feed 'n' Wax and an Arne Norell Safari Chair

2009-02-23T21:51:00.001-08:00

A few weeks ago I purchased an Arne Norell Safari Chair from a very peculiar eBay seller who seems to think that it's acceptable to mix the selling of designer mid century modern furniture and...gag/prank "greeting" cards with a homosexual bent. Last time I checked, eBay allowed you to have multiple seller accounts - and I wonder how many potential furniture customers these guys are driving away by mixing their two...er...passions (for lack of a better word).

At any rate, I purchased the Safari chair for the princely sum of $109.99, on a buy-it-now auction. Now, it's not even like the seller didn't know what they had. It was listed very clearly as an Arne Norell Safari chair, and made mention of the many examples for sale on 1stdibs.com for many thousands of dollars. S0, they knew what they had, but still only wanted a measly hundred bucks for the chair?? Well, see the kicker was that "the wood is really dried out" and "the stitching on the arms is coming loose and will need to be restitched". OK. Now, for someone who doesn't have ready, easy access to a good upholsterer, as I do, the latter problem might present an issue. A minor issue, but an issue nonetheless. The former problem, however, is decidedly a non-issue, if you know about a little product called Howard's Feed-N-Wax, sometimes affectionately referred to around here as "Magic Jazz" (available at most hardware stores for around $8 a bottle).

You see, when applied to dried out wood with some fine grade steel wool, the Magic Jazz makes crusty old thirsty wood look brand new again. I've been using the stuff for years, and even I am still sometimes shocked and amazed at what a little Feed-N-Wax can do. Now, it's certainly not a magic salve for every wood finishing problem. There are some cases when an application of Feed-N-Wax will do nothing but leave a greasy, waxy film on your furniture. However, when you know when to use it, the stuff works magic.

I wanted to film a video of me giving the pieces of my Safari chair the rubdown with the Magic Jazz - but unfortunately, I don't have a video camera. However, don't rule out the possibility of that instructional video appearing sometime in the near future! In the meantime, I did the next best thing - laid out my pieces of chair on a table, and took several "before", "during" and "after" shots of the Feed-N-Wax application. So, without further ado, may I present to you, "The Magic Jazz Meets Rosewood Sticks- A Photo Essay".

Part 1: Rosewood sticks, as found, pre-Magic Jazz application.

Part 2a: Rosewood pieces, "half and half" - pieces on the right have been waxed, pieces on the left have not. Part 2b: This one cuts to the heart of the matter! Here you can see the left side pieces waxed, the right side pieces unwaxed - and on the center piece, the top half waxed and the bottom unwaxed! Trust me, the difference in person has 10 times the impact.

Part 3: The finished product, all waxed up and ready to go!

And, finally, the application tools. A little piece of 4-ought steel wool for application and a nasty old rag to wipe it all down with. Voila! A rosewood safari chair, good as new! Well, almost - I still have to get the re-stitched arms back from my upholsterer! I'll be sure to post a picture of the completed chair as soon as I have it back!

A Musical Realization Involving the band Versus and cult Mass Suicides

2009-02-19T21:10:00.000-08:00

So this morning I was looking for a pair of my shoes. They happened to be navy blue Adidas sneakers with white stripes. I asked my wife if she had seen "my Adidas", to which she replied "my Adidas laced with sadness". Now, to someone who knows neither me or my wife, that might be viewed as a rather cryptic thing to say to one's spouse at 8AM. However, I knew that she was making an inside reference to the song "My Adidas" by the band Versus, who we both are sort of rabid fans of. I also knew that she had gotten the lyric wrong - so I said "no, it's actually "My Adidas laced with cyanide". To which she said "huh?? Why are his Adidas laced with cyanide??" I didn't immediately have a good answer to that, but I pondered the question as I was doing the dishes. I remembered that there's a lyric in the song about Heaven's Gate, and I thought "I wonder if it's actually about the Heaven's Gate cult?" Sure enough, I consulted the lyric book, and found that it is indeed a pop song about a cult mass suicide. Here are the lyrics to the first verse:

"Waiting for the comet to appear /A new beginning, far away from here /Start the countdown we’re going out in style / My adidas laced with cyanide".

Get it? So, the truly weird thing is that I've been listening to this song for going on 10 years now, singing along to the chorus, and having ABSOLUTELY NO IDEA what Richard Baluyut was going on about. This sort of thing has happened to me before, but perhaps never with such dramatic impact. Now, the fact is, up until recently I didn't really have a clear idea of what actually happened with the Heaven's Gate suicides - for some reason it just sort of passed me by when it happened back in '97 (I was in college, what can I say). However, recently we watched a special on the Jonestown massacre, and that got me thinking about cults and mass suicides for about 30 minutes, so I did a little bit of googling and reading, and came across the whole Heaven's Gate story. So, it's entirely possible that when "My Adidas" came out in 2000, I could have read through the lyrics completely and STILL not known what the devil Baluyut was talking about.

So...what does this have to do with anything? Absolutely nothing, except that I'll be just a little bit creeped out every time I hear that song from now on. But that won't stop me from listening to it.

A sweet pair of 1950s club chairs

2009-02-09T13:40:00.000-08:00

I just picked up this pair of chairs yesterday, and I'm super stoked about them. Why? Well...let's see. First, the scale is perfect. Not too big, not too small, and very comfortable. Second, nailhead trim is always a major bonus, and the little "cutouts" on the armrests are very swank as well. Third, they were CHEAP. Fourth, the duct tape just adds a certain "je ne sais quoi". ;-) No really, I'm imagining these with ebonized legs and reupholstered in silver gray velvet - or maybe moss green velvet. Or maybe mohair if I'm feeling really fancy. They'll be killer, just you wait.

blip.fm - a wonderful new time waster

2009-02-04T18:19:00.000-08:00

I just discovered this widget called blip.fm. It's like a personal radio station where you can play whatever song you like, and tune into what other people are playing based on what bands/artists you like. You can see my playlist so far here. I've only been using it for a few days, so it's pretty brief, and since I'm not chained to a desk all day, the times that I can sit around and arbitrarily pick out good tunes to play to an invisible audience are fairly few and far between. Nevertheless - it would be cool to see some people that I actually know on there! It's a nifty idea, and from now on, whenever anyone asks me what kind of music I'm into, I can just point them to my little radio station! Try it out, it's kind of addictive.

3 Wishes from Janus Home Granted: Part 1.

2009-02-03T20:36:00.001-08:00

First off, I guess I should apologize for being so slack-assed about posting on this here blog. When my own mother says "well, I thought about following your blog, but you don't post very much, so I didn't really see the point". OUCH. Point taken. From now on, I shall be a blogging fool. So, without further ado, may I present to you ...Karen Reisinger and her FABULOUS NEW WROUGHT IRON GARDEN CART!!
As you may be aware, last month Janus Home had a shindig called "Third Time's a Charm/Three Wishes from Janus Home". I won't get into the (lengthy) back story behind the name, but the point is that we (actually, Kelly - credit where credit is due and all that) decided that it would be a great thing if we gave some stuff away. At first I was like "you wanna do what??", but then the more I thought about it, the more it actually started to make sense.

So, we had a party, and invited everyone who attended to present us with "Three Wishes" - basically, anything that they wanted from our store, they could wish for. Three times. We would then pick out three people and grant one each of their wishes! If you couldn't figure it out, Karen, pictured above, was lucky winner #1, becoming the proud new owner of the awesome wrought iron garden cart (I always thought it was a bar cart, but who cares) she's pictured with.

Perhaps even MORE exciting than that (for us, anyway!), Karen also requested our design services - she needed help with her fabulous Raleigh Hills ranch (which is virtually untouched cosmetically from the '50s!) - and we were glad to oblige. Karen's house is going to be quite the project, considering that virtually NOTHING has been updated, but hey, we're up for the challenge!

Karen doesn't know it yet, but we plan on integrating this awesome Tomlinson swiveling lounge chair that we just bought (refinished and reupholstered, of course) into her decor.
The wood frame will likely go dark, the upholstery perhaps a lush velvet, or creamy linen. It epitomizes the style that we'd like to see blossom in her ranch, in that it's clearly a period '50s piece, but it's not stereotypically "mid century modern" - in fact, it has quite a few traditional elements about it. It almost comes across as a little bit Hollywood Regency, but without the pomp and circumstance. "Transitional", you might call it - and undervalued, as well. Tomlinson is one of those high-end furniture makers from the '50s whose stuff just hasn't quite risen above the surface in today's decorative arts market - but I think it's great stuff with a very distinctive line. And this chair - come on - it was "Tailor Made" for Mr. & Mrs. Myron Fleishman! You sure as hell don't get history like THAT when you buy a piece of furniture from Crate & Barrel!

Stay Tuned for parts 2 & 3 of "Three Wishes from Janus Home", featuring Marti Accuardi and her 19th Century French Wine Rack (that she's having made into a table! I can't wait to see it!) and Anneliese Sitterly and her 4 JL Moller dining chairs!