The World's Greatest Nautical Ice Bucket

We rarely think of J. Pierpont Morgan as a poor man. A man trapped by circumstance, fated to lead a life of deprivation and failure.

But after perusing the Boston Harbor Auctions extensive nautical sale, which includes objets, amenities, instruments and memorabilia from Morgan's various Gilded Age sailing steamer yachts, one is left with no other conclusion.

Because when all was said and done, when the pieces from the two vast sets of gold-rimmed Mintons china, adorned with the colors of the Corsair--Morgan named all his yachts Corsair--crossed with the burgee of the New York Yacht Club, where he was Commodore, are dispersed, one realizes the painful shame that taunted Morgan himself every time he made a president or robber baron another drink: he did not own this ice bucket.

Lot 1008: Silver plated ice bucket with rope carry handle. Fine quality. Highly polished. 10" diameter x 7" high. 250 - 350 [bostonharborauctions.com]

UPDATE Whoops, or maybe he did. The PDF version of the catalogue gives an estimate of $4-5,000. And though the text for the bucket doesn't make the claim, the overall catalogue presentation makes it sound like it's a Morgan item. I called the auction house about the discrepancy, and the representative told me they increased the estimate because they learned the bucket is solid silver, not plate. And while there is no proof it came from Morgan's yacht(s), it does come from the same source as all the documented Morgan material. So who knows?

Northwest Coast Horn Bowl

At Sotheby's

Credenza

Wouldn't this drill press station make a handsome credenza if you deleted those pesky drill presses and associated electrical boxes? Assuming you have a fork lift in your house.

Saturn V F-1 Engine Model

See, why on earth [sic] would you drop five figures for some autographed paperwork from an astronaut, when for the same price, you could get a full-scale model of a Saturn V F-1 rocket engine, as seen at the New York 1964 World's Fair??

It just seems like a no-brainer to me.

May 5, 2011, Lot No: 81W
FULL-SCALE SATURN V F-1 ENGINE MODEL, est. $15-25,000 [bonhams]

Flown Game Boy

Though I get the concept, I don't get the raw price premium placed on "flown" objects and artifacts. But whatever, cosmonaut Aleksandr A. Serebrov has finally decided to sell the Game Boy he took to the Mir space station for his 196-day stay in 1993, along with his Tetris cartridge and his owner's manual.

In addition to his letter of authenticity, the owner's manual and the Game Boy itself bear the "Mir postmark." That the Game Boy's postmark is only partly visible explains why someone who can fly a space station needs the instruction manual for Tetris; it provides a better stamping surface. Which actually explains the whole point of the postmark itself. What a racket.

May 5, 2011, Lot No: 250
NINTENDO GAME BOY FLOWN IN SPACE, est. $1500-2000 [bonhams.com]

NIST Heads

NIST's curators do not know what these handcarved, solid wood heads are, exactly, and so they are throwing the question out to the mob. Maybe they have something to do with hearing aid testing, they say.

Which is so funny, because I'm pretty sure I remember my great-grandfather telling me he'd been a hearing aid salesman, and that he'd had three wooden demo heads stolen from him while visiting the Bureau of Standards one time. So mystery solved!

Maybe you, too, can solve a nagging family mystery by crowdsourcing another NIST Museum artifact history [nist digital archives via io9]

Restoration Hardware Dances On Arne Jacobsen's Grave

No! Don't look! Argh--can't... turn... away... must... see... NO!



On the best day, someone would tell me they purchased this chair from some prop house in the Valley, and that they thought it had been made, but not used, for Terry Gilliam's Brazil.

Unfortunately, that is not what's going on here.

1950s Copenhagen Spitfire Chair, in steel-riveted aluminum with your choice of distressed leather upholstery, $1930 [restorationhardware.com via boingboing]
Related, from Fritz Hansen's Department of Lost Moral Highground: "DWR is the first retailer in the U.S. to offer the Egg in cowhide upholstery [for $12,995]." [dwr.com]

UPDATE: Alright, I can't stop thinking about this knockoff Egg Chair disaster, partly because it's-- OK, here's the deal. Instead of suturing this up on the cheap, get a single piece of aluminum, and give it and a real Egg Chair to one of those guys from Newport Pagnell who makes Aston Martin fenders with a wooden form and a bunch of little hammers. Then get back to me.

Box For Tools by Jean Nouvel

When I got the first invitations for a show at Gagosian Paris of furniture designed by French techno architect Jean Nouvel, I imagined a chateauful. But that is not the case.

Instead, there are two limited edition pieces: a table, which, sure--and a toolbox, which, holy smokes.



"Boîte à outils (1987-2011) is a storage system based on the standard toolbox that can be found in every household."

"The key word of my work is elementariness," said Nouvel, though I suspect he said it in French, where it sounds better: "Le maitre-mot de mon travail, c’est l’élémentarité." Also, "I would like to invent archetypes." Yes, well, wouldn't we all.

Jean Nouvel Furniture [sic], through May 21 [gagosian.com]