Mad for the Modern

By: Tom Austin

February 2007

For one collecting couple in Miami Beach with a taste for the resolutely modern, a passion for mid-century-and-beyond furnishings neatly dovetailed with the purchase of a neglected 1958 gem designed by Miami’s Modernist master, the late Morris Lapidus. As it happens, Lapidus, who was responsible for such landmarks as the Fontainebleau, the Eden Roc and the Americana, designed very few residential projects, preferring the grander canvas of resort hotels. According to legend, this particular waterfront house came to be only because of Lapidus’ dentist, who jokingly insisted that he would keep drilling until Lapidus agreed to design him a house. Whatever the truth may be, Lapidus, always ahead of his time, created both a perfect Florida home and—as it turns out—an ideal stage set for some very advanced furniture.

The pedigree of the house, which its current owners—a couple with a taste for the edgy—bought in 1993, is announced by the front entrance, akin to a mini-Fontainebleau with its assortment of trademark Lapidus touches: “woggles” or curves, evident in the sweep of the front step; “cheese holes,” a series of holes punched in concrete walls that recall Swiss cheese; and “bean poles,” slender pillars supporting overhangs. Inside the foyer, with the 1,200-square-foot living room stretching out to an expansive view of Biscayne Bay through a bank of curved windows, the house unfolds as a riot of color and highly designed objects. Immediately, visitors take in a 1991 Gaetano Pesce glass piece on the wall, “Caravaggio” (an abstract side view of the 17th-century painter’s face rendered in pieces of glass), with a Pesce table and vase underneath. To the left is a 1982 Ettore Sottsass “Malabar” sideboard from the first Memphis collection. The work of the pioneering Italian design collective still looks as fresh as it was back in the 1980s, and it’s no surprise that Memphis is enjoying a resurgence in interest. Fittingly, the top of the Sottsass cabinet serves as a display area for a variety of Sottsass glass and ceramic pieces from the 1960s to the 1980s.

To the right, in the den, a Pesce rubber carpet is accented by Memphis lamps and a Sottsass television cabinet. The couple’s fondness for Pesce is evident in their stories about a 1998 one-of-a-kind resin “Kim Chair” and an epic 1995 bookcase, “Miami Sound,” both of which are in their living room. To the husband, pursuing a designer’s work over the years has both its pleasures and travails: “For a decade or so, I was Pesce’s biggest, well, pesce—the fish he could always count on reeling in with a new design or an idea. The chair was a prototype that he ultimately decided was too expensive to produce; unlike someone like Michael Graves, he does very limited editions of his pieces. The bookcase was something I commissioned. It’s made of Styrofoam covered in resin. But after a while, the surface started to bubble, which I wasn’t happy about. He told me just to drill a hole in the bubbles, to let the air escape. Then, when he came to visit one day and I showed him the bookcase, the only thing he said was how great it was that his art piece was changing.”

To round out the Pesce-above-all theme in the living room, a red 1998 “Self-Portrait Vase”—bearing Pesce’s face, of course—is complemented by a large wall-mounted cabinet, “Pictures in an Exhibition, 1996–97,” with each cabinet door resembling a picture frame and adorned with an homage to famous paintings by Picasso, van Gogh and other Modern masters. Along with Pesce’s work, the living room also features a 1986 Sottsass desk, Alessandro Mendini’s “Proust” desk chair from 1979 and a note of pure fun and whimsy from 1990 that would have appealed to Lapidus—“The Welders” by Yonel Lebovici, two welding tanks transformed into standing lamps, complete with lampshades made from welder’s masks.

In the sunroom, close to a bank of windows overlooking Biscayne Bay, is the couple’s pride and joy—a 1968 “Safari Sofa” in leopard-skin print, designed by Archizoom. When closed, the piece is a neat 8-foot by 8-foot square block of white laminated plastic. Unfolded, like the petals of a flower, it is a masterpiece of high-1960s, terminally Austin Powers glamour, the perfect lobby furniture for, say, the Eden Roc in its heyday. The piece is paired with a mobile 1969 bar made by Sergio Mazza for Artemide, also in white laminated plastic. The couple found this particular treasure at the Lincoln Road Flea Market, held twice a month on Miami Beach.In the dining room, the glass-topped table and chairs are by Dan Johnson (from his 1958 “Gazelle” series), the elegant severity of the table neatly complemented by a Claire Falkenstein sculpture and “85 Bulb Chandelier,” an Octopus-like creation from the Droog collective consisting of a mass of—naturally—85 wires and bulbs. Along one wall is a stunning bentwood piece by an anonymous designer: a geometrically precise shelving unit that resembles a beehive. It’s used to showcase an assemblage of Russel Wright spun-aluminum ware, one of the couple’s early collecting efforts. To the female partner in this collecting team, it’s indicative of their shared history: “I’ve always collected California pottery, but the Russel Wright things—he was really the Ralph Lauren of his day—were pieces we picked up at flea markets 25 years ago, generally for under $5 each,” she says. “Now they’re worth a hundred times that, but it’s more important that we get to use them every day. With design, unlike painting and sculpture, you get to sit and eat on it. And every piece brings something back, an experience you might have had with a friend or whatever. To me, it’s a memory of something fun.”

The adjacent breakfast room, to the left of the foyer, contains a Sottsass chandelier from 1988 and a circa-1986 Sansone duo table and “Broadway” chairs by Pesce (the table for Cassina, the chairs for Bernini). Happily, most of the original decorative elements have been left intact. Just off the foyer, the powder room has Formica of the Miami Beach time-warp school and gold-plated fixtures, which gives a sensory experience akin to stepping back in time to the glory days at the Fontainebleau. All of Lapidus’ touches, no matter how dated—the powder room is an immersion in kitsch history—somehow work with the kind of furniture even he couldn’t have envisioned.

At one point in his career, Lapidus, feeling forgotten and abandoned by changing tastes in architecture, burned all his architectural plans. Those for this particular house, which the couple own, are one of the few remaining sets of Lapidus plans.

Fashion has caught up with the designer, and of course, with mid-century modern furniture, which has reached the apogee of its vogue at the annual design fairs that are part of Art Basel and Art Basel Miami Beach every year. Naturally, the prices have risen to match the demand, but the pleasures of collecting go far beyond cost. “Some people walk in and think we’re psychotic, but to us, this stuff is just fun,” the husband says. “Every time I come home and open my front door, I can’t help but smile.”

Tom Austin, a Miami-based writer, is a regular contributor to Art & Antiques. He recently profiled ceramics collector Linda Leonard Schlenger (December 2006).