kirkerblog 4.0

...20th-century auction time. Here are my thoughts on the sales transpiring over the first two weeks:

Christie's, June 2
A small sale, like many others this season, and mostly irrelevant to my particular area of expertise -- I know very little about Tiffany lamps, for instance -- and as with a number of other auctions this season, Giacometti is the star of the show. This sale is frankly on the boring side, not to mention predictable (few of these artists *don't* do well at auction, at least for their rarest work, which all of this certainly is); I'll hazard a guess 90%+ will go for auction estimate or possibly above. Can't decide if my personal fave is the Corbusier/Perriand storage unit or the Niemeyer chaise, though as usual I have a weakness for Evans Argente.

Wright, June 2
This one gives me a queasy feeling in my stomach. As I've said in the past, Richard Wright is one of my personal heroes, and he pretty much singlehandedly created the 20th-century auction market. But he's taking the exact opposite strategy as Phillips does below: he's starting with the design-art lots, which sold like absolute crap in the December sales, then moving into the reliable French, Italian and American sellers, and I have to question whether that makes sense (to see why, read my remarks about the LA Modern sale below). Still, he has one ace in the hole: the only Maloof rocker in any of this season's sales. Mr. Maloof passed away this week, so his already-rare rockers are now permanently limited in quantity. I'd wouldn't be shocked if bidding went through the roof on this one.

Phillips de Pury, June 3
Starts out with some reliable Corbusier, Perriand, Jouve, Prouve and -- of course -- Giacometti before going off the freakin' deep end with design art. Some of the estimates are way too high, particularly for Evans and Nakashima, but overall this is by far my favorite of the bunch. Still, it has problems. $22,000-$28,000 for a Robert Wilson Breakfast Chair when Sotheby's has an identical one from the same series at $15,000-$20,000? While I love the Campana brothers, they haven't been fairing so well at auction, so I'm not sure this lovely chair will sell. And then there's the Arad chaise, star of the show. Can the market support a $150K chair that's not a one-off? Oh, wait: they're actually trying to sell two of the five. At the same show. And plenty more Wilson & Campana brothers, not to mention Maarten Bass and Zaha Hadid. All I have to say is: ballsy.

LA Modern, June 7
I have to partially plead the Fifth here, since I'm selling a few of my own pieces at this sale that proved too rich for Austin tastes ... including the very first lot, which some of you may recognize (along with some others that I won't divulge). While it's an honor to be bestowed pole position, it's also a potential invitation to disaster if the item doesn't sell within estimate range (at least) or, worse, not at all, thus setting the tone (most likely disastrous) for the entire auction. I had wanted to attend this sale in person, to gauge the feel of the audience (and see if phone, Internet or in-person bidders were predominating), but unfortunately I have the weekend shift at the gallery for the moment and no one on my team could cover for me, so I have to pass. I'm bullish on this sale for several reasons. First, their last one in December did well even at one of the worst points of the recession, and in one of the states hardest hit by the real estate collapse. There are simply a lot of rich people in L.A. who don't mind paying large sums of cash for objects of desire. Also, unlike New York, L.A. has been much more buffered from the Wall Street collapse and Madoff scandal that decimated the pockets of many a Manhattanite (and which I maintain is the reason Rago's last sale was such a bust). They also have a nice and large selection of mid-century standards, but at the same time aren't afraid to include five spectacular Giacometti pieces (see lots 282-286). A few of my associates are skeptical about how this auction will fare, given my misjudgment of the recent Rago sale; we'll soon see if my bullishness is merited.

Sotheby's, June 12
Not quite as ballsy as the Phillips sale, but certainly more interesting than the Christie's sale, owing to the inclusion of several design art pieces (along with the Tiffany and French designers who are invariably safe buys). Shiro Kuramata's getting an increasing amount of attention these days, but $150,000-$200,000 for a chair issued in an edition of 56? $250,000-$350,000 for an admittedly very cool Gehry bench? (this one's one-of-a-kind, at least) Color me skeptical.

So: a certain magazine that shall remain nameless for now is thinking about featuring my house in an upcoming issue. Based on the skills of my awesome interior designer, Tracey Overbeck Stead, as well as the fact that I own one of the higher-profile design galleries in town, they're assuming my pad is pretty cool. Pardon the momentary immodesty, but ... well, it is, but that's because I'm a total design geek. Nevertheless, I'm feeling like a contestant on "Top Design" right now, and I have to admit it'd be an ego blow if they decided to pass on featuring the place.

There's also the small problem of my place presently looking like it was just attacked by a Tasmanian devil. Reams of paper -- auction catalogs and receipts, tax info, magazine tearsheets, credit card bills I haven't shredded because my shredder broke two months ago and I haven't gotten around to replacing it, etc. -- litter the majority of my office floor. Nearly the entirety of my ten-foot-long kitchen island is covered in similar detritus. My guest bedroom is chock full of random crap that I don't have room for elsewhere, given that I have no garage and my attic's already on the full side. I will be spending most of the evening and tomorrow morning figuring out where the hell to put all this stuff, since my cleaning lady's coming tomorrow at 2pm and needs to do the heavy cleaning of these various spaces.

Although I like to think of my friends as an intellectual bunch, I managed to get into an argument last night about "Gossip Girl." Several of my friends who attended Texas universities and have never lived in New York doubted the veracity of the show's depiction of the lives of the children of New York's elite. While, yes, some parts of the show are ridiculous -- no one wears clothes likes that; none of the kids attend school while simultaneously running a billion-dollar corporation; the Upper East Side isn't *that* lily-white; and there's no freakin' way a starving-artist gallery owner could afford a huge loft right next to the Williamsburg Bridge -- you'd be amazed at how much of it isn't too far from the truth.

Apocryphal tale: I went to the University of Virginia, one of the schools of choice for Upper East Siders whose grades aren't quite good enough for the Ivys (a group that, unfortunately, included myself). First-years are required to live on grounds (and at U.Va., one does not use the words "freshman" and "campus" as descriptors), so I got to know quite a few of these kids in our communal dorms; I think it's safe to say they comprised a majority of the university's out-of-state contingent, which under Virginia law is 33%. One girl in my dorm grew up in Manhattan, attended the infamous Miss Porter's School, and - being a New York City girl - didn't have a car. After concluding she needed one, she went to the town's Saab dealership and charged a brand-new Saab convertible on her AmEx Platinum card. To this day I remain shocked at how nonchalantly all of this took place, though that's actually nothing compared to the time I attended a party at a Princeton eating club ... but that involves details far too sordid for discussion on a public blog.

Now that I've taken in the whole shebang, I can perhaps provide some more perspective on the show.

A number of stalwarts from previous years weren't there, as was much discussed. (There was plenty of empty stall space in the back.) Obviously this was due to the economy. The high-end European lines were still, for the most part, present, but their booths were, well, kind of ghostly in attendance.

What I was glad to see this year -- a change from years past -- was an emphasis on up-and-coming American design, specifically that coming from the country's top college design programs. RISD and Pratt get top honors there, and I will hopefully be carrying several of the pieces I saw (but since they're one-offs without a traditional manufacturer, who knows how that will go - it will depend on whether the students have the interest and acumen to produce them absent help from a major manufacturer), and I also appreciated what was pretty much a blatant plea from a panel of accredited ICFF panelists to put a dozen or so excellent prototypes by promising young designers into production. (I will certainly buy at least three if this comes to fruition.) Much of the young-designer stuff at ICFF is prototype, so cool though it may be, it won't ever make it to the public at large unless a major manufacturer picks up the line, since these young craftspeople largely lack the facilities to handle mass production on their own.

I was also glad to see more American design in general. One continual problem we've dealt with since day one is the exorbitant cost of importing just about anything from Europe, which for the time being is where we source most of our accessories. A few companies have their act together here -- muuto gets much kudos for making the process so simple, but maybe that's just the Danish way -- but for the most part it's been hellaciously expensive, time-consuming, and margin-eating.

I did, however, snag one coup: a lamp I've been eyeing since 2006. Yes, three years is a very long time -- and this is a lamp cool enough to have landed on the pages of Wallpaper* even before it was officially for sale, and in the design world there are few higher honors -- but it's taken that long to get an investor on board to produce it en masse, and also in three sizes and six colors. Since they're on an eight-week minimum lead time, and since no U.S. stores yet carry the brand, I bought the floor model (and hand-carted it back to Austin, a hellish experience I'd rather not revisit), and will thus have the only physical example of the lamp in North America for at least two months. It'll be making a nice "surprise" appearance at the launch we're planning for a certain new Mexican design collective's line in June. Hopefully it won't steal the show!

...or, technically, day #2, since my plane didn't arrive till after the first day's festivities closed. This year seems ... off. Much less floor traffic than last year. I've overheard vendors complaining about making only a solitary sale on the floor when in past years past numerous POs would have already been placed. Guess everyone's playing it safe, as I am. (I never order anything straight off the floor.)

That said, I'm ordering some accessories immediately. One of our biggest weaknesses is lighting, and we can get some amazing LED-based task lights from a San Francisco-based firm for ... well, let's just say wholesale, and that it's cheap. (I like them so much that I'm ordering two for my bedroom, soon to be scouted for a potential magazine shoot.) Then there's the of Italian lighting designer whose work I love, but who hasn't figured out the U.S. shipping hurdle yet. I offered to help hook him up with our Established shipper who imports from the UK (the Italian in question basis his operations there), and I'd unquestionally like to be his first U.S. dealer.

I've seen some amazing accessories I'd love to add to inventory this year, but really: it all boils down to cold hard benjamins. I have to play it somewhat safe and base orders on what we know, from experience will sell, and also order taking our cash flow into account, but I will say ICFF has already been invaluable in terms of sourcing design that's either American-made or readily shippable from American warehouses, which has been one of our biggest stumbling blocks to date. Shipping anything from Europe is almost invariably exorbitant as well as time-consuming, so we've been trying to source American craft for quite some time now.

Tonight was the Arthouse 5x7 fundraiser, and while not the literal social event of the season -- I think those kudos go to the Art Ball or Texas Film Hall of Fame Awards -- it certainly attracted possibly the most diverse variety of the town's glitterati of any event of the year. Where else would you see the likes of Julie Thornton, avant-garde art patron extraordinaire (and one of Arthouse's Queen Bees, which I mean in the most complimentary sense), **** ******* (very low-profile but highly influential arts patron), and everyone from drag queens to bohemian artists to the Austin Chronicle's infamous Stephen Moser, who made some unfortunate front-page headlines recently, and subsequently scared the crap out of everybody by disappearing entirely this past week for several days straight, but then turned up the past couple of nights looking as fabulous as always? Needless to say, just about every single arts, fashion and gossip journalist I know was there, too, furiously scribbling notes and taking shots of all the boldface names in the crowd. In all, it was a fantastic event and it's one of my annual Austin faves -- and, apparently, not affected by the recession in the least (this was easily the most crowded one I've been to yet).

I am off for ICFF in NYC tomorrow, intermixed with various social and professional meetings, lunches and dinners. I doubt my jampacked schedule will leave me much time for blogging, but I'll have a full report -- with photos, of course -- upon my return.

You know, I remain torn on how to proceed regarding vintage furniture. It's clear that there's not a sizable market, in Austin and in the current economy, for the high-end stuff, even priced at 20% below NYC and L.A. comps. That said, we have a few designers who've sold like wildfire during our sale, and I know where to source their stuff for a reasonable amount of money going forth, so why not continue to carry them? (We also have a few high-net-worth types seeking very specific iconic pieces, ranging from Wegner Papa Bears to Platner dining tables, and we will of course continue to source those.) We're certainly not making a killing on them, but we're eeking out at least some profit. Our cash flow at present has to be devoted primarily to adding new stuff to the floor, however, so I'm still mostly going to have to put vintage on hold -- with only a few exceptions. (I am still kicking myself for not buying a Thonet chair I could've bought for $100 that is up for auction at a prestigious auction house next month with an estimate of $2,000-$3,000.)

I remain upbeat about our change in direction, particularly now that I fully grasp the scope of the impact of the Mexican design collective's line. There's plenty of eco-friendly furniture out there; God knows there's plenty of cheap junk out there; and there's a lot of attractive pieces out there, but no one yet has mastered the formula of combining all three. Two of the three, sure: you can find ample eco-friendly wood chairs if you don't mind spending three grand a pop, but no one's yet done affordable eco-friendly, and this is the niche in which I think we will shine. My awesome PR rep Elaine has a full-tilt-boogie launch plan already in action, and we're trying to get one of the country's most prominent design mags (I can't say their name just yet, but safe to say you know it) to sponsor the event, so we'll see. I already know we'll have saturation coverage within Austin: newspaper, every local TV station, every local glossy & shelter mag, all the major local design bloggers, etc., but I want to take this sucker national. I'll be in NYC next week for ICFF, so Elaine is seeing if she can set up any last-minute meet-and-greets with anyone in New York media circles who might want to use it for a story angle. ("Dwell," the most obvious prospect, is based out of San Francisco, but since I'm heading to L.A. next month for an auction, a S.F. detour wouldn't be much of a big deal. I certainly wouldn't mind meeting with the folks at, say, "Met Home" or "Elle Decor" about it while in NYC, though.)

Just a quick note that a Vuitton trunk similar to the one I mentioned a couple of days ago -- and also the one I bought ten years ago for $800 -- ended up selling for $6,800. Oh, how I like buying low and selling high...

No, this won't be another Todd Merrill rant. I get asked on nearly a daily basis where I source my vintage stuff. I tell people, honestly, that I get most at auction, some at estate sales, and a handful through private sales. I thought it might help, for those of you new to my blog, to understand how the auction world works.

The 100-pound gorillas, by a long shot, are Christie's and Sotheby's. They sell museum-grade pieces of virtually every subset of art, antiques, antiquities and decorative arts imaginable, but as of late have attracted the most attention for their contemporary art sales -- where, until recently, hedge-fund managers and Russian oligarchs and the like were spending mindblowing amounts of money on work by living artists. Those days ended once Wall Street crashed and oil prices plummeted, and the true art collectors -- as opposed to speculators looking at art as investment as opposed to objects of amazing beauty -- have returned to their earlier patterns of investing in Impressionist art and the like. (You know, the stuff by dead guys whose work is permanently limited in availability, not a Damien Hirst who can continue cranking out minor variations of his work for another 30 years or so.)

Christie's & Sotheby's also sell 20th-century design, but only the best of the best -- and at top dollar. On top of the hammer price, both houses charge a 25% buyer's premium, as well as a variable seller's premium dependent on the amount of prep required to display the piece pre-sale.

A semi-new entrant in the field is Phillips de Pury, a house that focuses exclusively on contemporary art and design, as well as 20th-century vintage. They're also prone to whimsical auctions along the lines of a sale of "bling," e.g. the incredibly over-the-top jewels custom-made mainly for the rap crowd. Rumor on the street is that they're experiencing some major financial difficulties, given the extent to which the contemporary art and design markets have crashed (as mentioned in a previous post, limited-edition "design art" is, basically, over for now).

In my field, 20th-century design & decorative arts, three specialty houses have emerged as powerhouses, in some cases selling work equal in caliber to, or even superior to that, seen at Christie's & Sotheby's: Wright, which pioneered the field; Sollo Rago (usually just referred to as Rago), which doesn't exclusively auction modern but is best known for it, and which has in particular driven the Paul Evans and George Nakashima markets to massive heights in recent years; and LA Modern, the only major player on the West Coast (which also happens to have the lion's share of housing where 20th-century design fits the best - nice monopoly on their part). All three offer bidding either in person, over the phone (arranged in advance - they call you when your desired lot comes up and then bid as your proxy), and online using specialized software (which, frustratingly for us Mac users, in some cases only works on PCs). Both individuals and dealers do their buying here, though dealers tend to prefer private sales (when possible) because purchase prices are lower.

Below Wright, Rago and LA Modern are the mid-tier regional auction houses where I've been doing a fair share of buying as of late. Since I'm not going to reveal all of my sources, I'll refrain from mentioning specific dealers, but their goods are generally either lesser names or what I will charitably call "fixer-uppers" (e.g. fabric either ripped or completely worn, major restoration work needed for the wood, etc.). Still, if you're willing to put in some time and effort, you can get some major buys at these places.

As for where the market's headed ... it's really anybody's guess at this point. My personal two cents is that Nakashima's work, while gorgeous, is now priced at the point of absurdity, a suspicion backed up from a recent interview I read with one of the principals at either Christie's or Sotheby's who observed that the Nakashima market was basically a bidding war between only two players. When one of them dropped out due to financial woes, the market for his work collapsed. I noticed one major change at Rago's last auction (Rago is one of Nakashima's biggest dealers btw): as opposed to last fall, where the reserve price on all Nakashima pieces was the low estimate, at their recent one none of the Nakashimas had reserves. Thus, many went for opening bid -- in Rago's case, that's half the low estimate. Whether somebody got a really good deal or whether the Nakashima market will decline even further remains to be seen.

Two things have become clear though: the days of sky-high prices for factory-produced, plywood/veneer-based goods are for the most part over, and there are some major deals out there for classics that will rapidly increase in value once the economy recovers. Have you always wanted a design classic like a vintage Egg or Papa Bear chair? Now's most definitely the time to buy; I've seen a few go at auction for half of what they would've pulled a year ago.

I found this eBay listing quite amusing. I bought a Vuitton trunk of similar vintage, albeit slightly less good condition, on eBay for $800 ten years ago. Still have it, too, sitting at the foot of my bed. This particular listing's way overpriced, but even in this economy, the eBay minimum for a late 19th/early 20th-century Vuitton trunk (in logo or Damier leather, at least - painted or unmarked ones go for much less) is in the $5,000 range. Not a bad ROI, I have to say ... not that I'm planning on selling my little beauty.

I'm about to break a cardinal rule here: revealing a significant insider secret about how the 20th-century vintage market operates. But first, a vignette. One of the very first things I bought at auction was a Silas Seandel coffee table; this was long before I opened my gallery, by the way, and the table was intended for my own living room. The pre-sale estimate was $3,000-$5,000, and it was the first of five or six Seandels up for sale. Even though it was a stunner, for some reason no one was bidding on it, so I won it for the fire-sale price of $1,300. Every subsequent Seandel piece sold for within estimate range.

The next day I received an e-mail from the auction house saying that an interested bidder had wanted the piece and was on the other line when they tried to call him to bid by phone, and asked whether I'd consider flipping the piece. Not wanting to turn down the opportunity of a quick profit, I said sure, and not wanting to be overly greedy, I said I'd sell it for $2,500, giving me nearly a 100% overnight profit and giving the buyer the chance to have it for below the low estimate. He accepted my offer. A few weeks later, I happened to notice that exact table (all of Seandel's work is one-of-a-kind) on 1stdibs, which is a site that contains the collective inventory of over 1,000 vintage and antiques dealers. His asking price? $12,000!! (That's *way* more than Seandel tables were selling for at retail at the time -- on average it was more like $6,000 -- and thus it remains unsold today.)

This was two years ago. Times have changed -- drastically -- since then, but some people apparently haven't gotten the message just yet, in particular one Todd Merrill. He's arguably the top 20th-century vintage dealer in the country, and literally wrote the book on modern American furniture craft. On his e-mail update today, I saw he'd added a Paul Evans burl & chrome console table to his inventory. The kicker is I'd seen that particular piece before, at a Rago auction in February, and I was there when he won it for $1,200 (including buyer's premium), well below the $2,000-$4,000 pre-sale estimate. Since he has it listed on his site as "price upon request," I went ahead and requested. His asking price? $9,000.

Even for the most prominent Paul Evans dealer in the country, the arrogance of asking a 750% premium over purchase price, in our current dire economy, is, quite simply, total bullshit, and I'm unapologetically calling him out on it. Although the economy appears to be showing signs of improvement, my compatriots in the 20th-century vintage field need to pull their collective heads from their asses and quit overcharging their customers to such ridiculous extents.

In the interests of avoiding hypocrisy, I will admit that I have, on occasion, priced my own vintage stuff at a significant premium over what I paid, in instances when I happened to stumble across bargains that were absurdly cheap. I am henceforth renouncing those tactics, though I will note that for the most part our prices have been consistently pretty fair, and also roughly 20% less than what bigger city dealers charge for comparable pieces. Although we're going to be selling a much more limited selection of vintage in the future (and at lower price points than before), and mostly on our Web site (though we'll still have periodic clearance sales like the one on right now, with discounted vintage on the floor), it'll be priced at rational levels allowing us to make a decent profit off of it (necessary to pay, you know, rent and stuff), not batshit-crazy 2007-boom-economy levels.

My reaction to the first four or five episodes of "Dollhouse" was identical to my experience with the first few eps of "Heroes": eh. But then (and I'm not giving away any significant spoilers here) we meet Victor ... and then Mellie ... and then a mole in the Dollhouse sends a message to Agent Ballard ... and then on the season's penultimate episode, aired last Friday, creator Joss Whedon (he of "Buffy" and "Firefly" fame) brought back an actor from one of his previous shows -- the show had two already -- and unleashed the mother of all surprise endings, thus leading to a season finale this week written and directed by Whedon and said to be utterly mindblowing.

The problem? The ratings ain't so hot, because Fox was forced to put it on Fridays due to "American Idol" eating up their whole spring schedule (and not wanting to move "The Simpsons," "24," or "House" from their long-standing nights), and although Joss claims Fox is giving him "positive feedback" about its prospects for renewal, I think that's also what they said about "Firefly" right before canceling it.

It's not the most addictive show I've seen to date -- "24" wins that honor, followed by (embarrassingly enough) "Footballers Wives" -- but it's close. And guess what? You don't even have to wait for the season to come out on DVD to catch up! You can watch the whole thing on Hulu - in hi-def, no less (assuming you have a solid high-speed Internet connection). Dontcha just love the Internet?

The success of this weekend's vintage sale at the gallery has me rethinking our strategy there. I was originally planning on mostly pulling out of vintage sales for now and offering a buying service for clients interested in very specific pieces. However, this weekend's sales -- both volume and dollar-wise, this was our best two-day sales period to date -- have me reconsidering that proposition.

Clearly, there is a market in Austin for vintage -- even the completely unrestored variety, which is mostly what sold this weekend. The problem simply appears to have been price points: we had everything marked up to what comparable galleries on 1stdibs had them at, minus a 20% or so discount versus NYC and L.A. galleries given our lower overhead. Those prices, frankly, got us nowhere in this economy, but a minimum 50% discount over original price is another story entirely. We've done a good job at sourcing pieces at a reasonable price (and gotten better at it since launch), and even at up to 75% off, we're still making a reasonable profit (with a few exceptions I admittedly overpaid for originally) on everything we're selling. I've read a number of articles about the post-recession customer "expecting" discounts in excess of 50% -- quite frankly, that's my own attitude nowadays in buying many things, furniture and clothes in particular -- so I totally understand this mentality. As all the Filene's Basement shopping bags proclaim, everyone loves to say "I just found a bargain!" -- now more so than ever. (Note to Austinites unfamiliar with the chain: Filene's Basement is basically the Northeast's version of Neiman's Last Call.)

Don't get me wrong: Kirk's ultimate future remains as a destination for newly produced, design-driven furniture and accessories. But having blowout sales of great vintage finds three or four times a year ... why the hell not? Just from this weekend I can tell what designers are selling, Pearsall and Baughman topping the list, and we've clearly been approaching things from the wrong angle by trying to get them reupholstered and refinished and looking near-flawless prior to hitting the floor (which makes them look great but adds substantially to our margins, even though our reupholsterers and restorers do great work at reasonable rates). One of our biggest sales this weekend was a piece in full original, far-from-perfect condition, a Pearsall sofa with great lines and fabric clearly used regularly for 30+ years. Honestly, it was one of the things I figured would sell last, but it attracted more attention over the weekend than nearly anything else, possibly because it's such an unusual couch design (rounded as opposed to the standard rectangular, and with rubber supports underneath, lending it substantial comfort).

I'd like to see how the rest of the sale goes first -- hell, it doesn't even officially start until Tuesday (this weekend was the "friends & family" sale) -- but I think I have to repudiate some of my earlier comments about pulling "mostly" out of vintage. We can still pull off selling it, as long as a) we make it "an event" and b) the customer knows they're getting quality work at a substantial discount (and really, everything we have on the floor could be resold, at a profit, on the auction market once the economy improves).

Kirk opened its doors for business the first week of last September. At the time the prospects for a gallery selling high-end vintage seemed strong: the economy was roaring ahead, as was the vintage market at auction; a whole boatload of high-end condo projects were planned within a six-block radius of the gallery; and Kirk would have a unique niche in the Austin area. You know what happened next. Suddenly $14,000 sofas and $8,000 dining tables and the like had a considerably smaller pool of buyers.

We also, in the months since launch, experienced a bit of an identity crisis: are we a design gallery or a vintage gallery? The answer was both, but it also became increasingly clear that the two were not necessarily complementary concepts in the eyes of our consumers, and that having avant-garde new design accessories alongside mid-century classics and the like only served to confuse people.

Consequently, I've made the decision that, starting today, Kirk is exiting the vintage field - mostly. We're still offering a vintage-buying service for interested clients -- seeking out specific pieces at auction or through private sale, specifically -- and we might mix-and-match the occasional vintage find alongside our new products, but from here on out Kirk will be a design store in the mold of The Future Perfect and Matter. In fact, we already have a fair amount of brand crossover with the two, including the bad-ass new Rich Brilliant Willing Excel lamp that debuted to mass blogosphere acclaim in January, which can be found at both stores. Matter also carries a full selection of the Established & Sons pieces we should have floor samples of in a few weeks.

(Speaking of Established, there's one caveat regarding them I should mention: we have decided, in contrast to my announcement earlier this year, not to carry their Stack dresser. Mind-blowing though its aesthetic appeal may be, both Stephani and I discovered -- upon seeing a real-life example at Matter during separate trips to New York -- that it really doesn't work very well as a functional object. Dresser drawers should glide open; these jam and lock in all sorts of odd fashions. Considering Matter no longer carries the Stack, either, we made the decision to pass on it.)

Versus my larger and more established New York competitors, however, I do have a bit of a trump card up my sleeve: a U.S. exclusive on a new-to-the-country line that will totally rock your world. You'll be seeing a full-fledged media blitz on it starting in about a month, but for now all I'll say is this: eco-friendly design is all the rage these days, but the problem is that most of it costs an arm and a leg. This line we're adding has in essence discovered the magic formula for the times: furniture that's eco-friendly, beautiful and reasonably priced. We don't have our final price list set just yet, but it's looking like the least expensive furniture piece from the line will run about $250. (No, that's not a typo.)

In order to make room for all this bad-ass new stuff, we're having -- starting today -- an unprecedented clearance of our remaining vintage gear: every single thing in the store is 50%-75% off (note absence of "up to" qualifier - everything is at least 50% off, minimum). Basically you're getting it at about as close to wholesale as it gets. Like Arne Jacobsen's Swan chair? We have one in mint condition for $1,800. (They're a smidge more at DWR, though to be fair, ours is vinyl, not leather -- though it's damn good vinyl and in mint condition.) How about a Milo Baughman armchair, in perfect condition, for $500? (Some of those run 10x as much. Do a search on 1stdibs if you don't believe me!) Anyway, about half of the items are up on kirkgallery.com, except for the stuff we just floored yesterday that hasn't been photographed (including the aforementioned Swan and Baughman). Trust me, the best stuff will go quickly, so get yer butts down here sooner rather than later!