Passion for California design refuses to die. On October 14, when die-hard collectors packed a large, poorly-lit showroom in West Hollywood for L.A. Modern Auctions' latest sale, Judy Chicago's painted Corvair hood got the event off to a roaring start. Forty years before Richard Prince, whose "American Prayer"--a 1969 Dodge Charger mounted on a plywood base--greets visitors to his current show at the Guggenheim, the pioneering feminist was making art out of quintessentially American cars. It sold to Moderna Museet of Stockholm for $288,000, a high watermark for her work.

Judy Chicago's Painted Corvair hood

Richard Diebenkorn's color etching "High Green, Version 1" from 1992 fetched $156,000, the second highest price paid for one of this edition of 65. Another record price was turned in for Otto Natzler's mobile. At $45,000, this was higher than any other work Natzler did without his wife.

Richard Diebenkorn's color etching "High Green, Version 1"

Otto Natzler's mobile

Thanks to the continuing embrace by predominantly Los Angeles-based buyers, the sale topped $2 million, a new high for the auction house. "The fine art sold fantastically," said Peter Loughrey, the auction house's director. An Andy Warhol screen-print, "Jane Fonda" #37 in an original edition of 1000, fetched $45,000.

Andy Warhol's screen-print, "Jane Fonda"

Another stunner was the $144,000 paid for a dining table and eight chairs built by the 91-year-old Altadena designer, Sam Maloof. It was purchased by La Jolla resident Bonnie Kane from her brother--their parents commissioned the table from the artist in 1963. "I have so many memories of this table," she said. "Not only did my brothers and sisters and I grow up around it, but Sam was a long-time friend of our family."

Table by Sam Maloof

Greta Magnusson Grossman continued her meteoric rise. A tripod floor lamp by the designer fetched $9600, a new record. "Almost higher than New York retail prices," quipped Loughery. Explaining her new-found popularity, he pointed to the stellar sums paid for French and Italian lighting of this period and explained, "Grossman's lamps are every bit as good." The lamp's buyer was the Los Angeles County Museum (read about NY gallerist Michael Govan's plan to resuscitate the museum) which paid another record for a rare coffee table designed by Alvin Lustig: $13,200. This was nearly three times the pre-auction estimate. (See a slideshow of Lustig's striking book cover designs.)

One reason for the large number of lots, well over 500, was Loughrey's desire to showcase newer artists (the big names didn't necessarily demand big prices: A classic desk from Richard Neutra reached only $4,800 while a custom sideboard from Schindler didn't sell). A desk from the Seattle-based designer, Roy McMakin, used in his showroom on Beverly Boulevard in the 1980's, came in within the estimate at $14,400. Raymond Pelton's 70s hippie-meets-
modern design sensibility was much in evidence in his "Manzanita Burl, Draw Tube Box." But the foot-high gnarly knob of wood that, when pulled apart, reveals a polished wood compartment, fetched only $1200.

In the current frenzy, however, "undiscovered" does not stay that way for long. "I was the first with Paul Laszlo and Billy Haines, who designed for Jack Warner and the Annenbergs," confessed Loughrey. "Now I can't get my hands on their work."

--David Hay

All photos courtesy of Los Angeles Modern Auctions (LAMA)

How do you rake in $4.97 million for a house that, for decades, sat in the middle of Africa, rotting away? Firstly, make sure it was designed by one of the hottest names in today's decorative art market, the late Jean Prouvé. Then, transport it to New York, place it on an empty lot under the 59th Street bridge and throw cocktail parties for prospective buyers and design buffs. Finally, surround it at sale with more than one hundred pieces designed by very hot Twentieth Century French names: Charlotte Perriand, Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeaneret and of course, Prouvé himself.

By the time hotelier, Andre Balazs walked away with the star attraction -- Prouvé's restored (and now very shiny) aluminum-sided Maison Tropicale -- Christie's could congratulate themselves on their strategy. The early June auction, attended by such aficionados as Jacqueline and Vito Maria Schnabel, netted $8,318,000.

Like the then futuristic house, designed in 1951 to house officers of France's colonial service in the Congo, many items had traveled far. Lot 299, a typical design from Prouvé, a one time metalworker, and Perriand -- it combined lacquered aluminum, sheet steel, plywood and exotic wood -- was a cupboard from the laundry room at the Air France quarters in Brazzaville. It was snapped up for $38,400.

Part of the allure of the Maison Tropicale, unlike many pedigreed Modern houses now arriving on the art market, was that it was designed to travel. Disassembled, it fits into 6 containers. "It was the very first Pre Fab," said an excited Balazs, the owner of the Mercer and the Chateau Marmont. "Prouvé's point of view -- combining the environmental with industrial and the Modern -- is fascinating."

When it was discovered in Brazzaville by the antiques dealer, Eric Touchaleaume, who returned it to France in 2000, it was riddled with bullet holes. One remains, inside the top of the steps to the living floor. At another time, it served as a maison for Congolese squatters.

After the sale, Balazs announced he would move his prize "somewhere tropical." An outdoor cabana or a cocktail lounge in one of his hotels perhaps? Somewhere where those who now hang out at Balazs' Raleigh Hotel in Miami Beach can experience the industrial design genius of Prouvé. At these prices they won't be squatters.

-- DAVID HAY

All images courtesy of Tien Mao.

PWhat better way to spend a weirdly cold May weekend than at Wright, the Chicago auction house that has become the hunting ground for hot design?

For the latest in Wright's popular continuing series, "Important 20th Century Design," the inventory was so massive that the sale took place over two days. We were there, however, primarily as longtime fans of the great Gio Ponti (1891-1979, at left), and in particular to ogle the pieces from via Dezza 49, Ponti's famous residence in Milan. A major player in Italy's post-war industrial design renaissance, Ponti trained as an architect. (The Denver Art Museum, designed in 1971, is one example of his architecture in the United States.)

He was also an artist, writer, and designer of all manner of home goods.

The pieces from Via Dezza promised something special. Ponti had definite ideas about modern living and how houses should function--light and space with moveable walls. Attached to his home was his studio, a garage-size space where workers could pull up to their drafting tables on their Vespas. (The influential domus magazine, which Ponti founded in 1928, also had an office here.) While there were certainly other wonders besides Ponti's wares on the block--chairs by Hans Wegner and Jean Prouve, some very desirable steel sculptures by Isamu Noguchi--as the Ponti pieces came up, there was a palpable shift in energy: the people working the phones began really earning their pay as four out-of-town buyers quickly outbid everyone in the room.

The white 1953 Diamond sofa ($30,000-40,000 estimate, at right) went for $95,000 while the matching pair of chairs (same estimate) sold for $110,000. A small round coffee table of enameled steel (1954, see below) appraised at $25,000-30,000 went for $112,000, worn paint and all. A nearly 6-foot long customized shelf of white lacquered wood (1957) estimated at $12,000-16,000 fetched $32,000. Other pieces not from via Dezza fetched solid prices, too; for instance, a blue 1953 Distex lounge chair with its signature long arms suggesting a body in mid-stretch ($9,000-12,000 estimate) sold for $13,000. A 1947 pair of beds designed for Ambrosini Mobili ($25,000-30,000) sold for $46,000. The only non-via Dezza piece to make a huge jump was a rug made by Parentesi Quadra ($5,000-7,000) which went for $36,000.

It was puzzling that a 1950 Ponti oil on an octagon canvas (below) had no takers. With the current kooky state of the art market, and a $40,000-60,000 estimate, it seemed the steal of the bunch.

(See the Men's Vogue article on the Wright auction house and its 42-year-old founder, Richard Wright.)

--RUTH LOPEZ

Pittura da tavolo from Via Dezza 49, Italy, 1950

Pair of beds from Via Dezza 49

Custom coffee table from Via Dezza 49, enameled steel and glass

Back in the 1950s, when America was racing towards a Jetsonesque ideal of modernity and futurism, furniture maker George Nakashima was quietly going in the opposite direction. He established a small community around family and work in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, and from there, across the next four decades, produced a completely unique body of work. Nakashima furniture remains as remarkable now as it was then: It embraces modernism while standing against the forces of mass production and retaining the quality, intentionality, and humanity associated with our most admired artisans. But Nakashima was not only an artisan: He was an artist, too, and the attention and prices that his furniture is beginning to draw only prove it.

After all, would anyone risk spilling merlot on an $822,400 table not created by an artist?

That was the price that Sotheby's New York auctioneer Tobias Meyer recently knocked down for Nakashima's masterful Arlyn table, a rich, oversized cross-section of redwood burl (originally from California's Muir Woods) that the craftsman executed in 1988 for his most notable patrons, Dr. Arthur and Evelyn Krosnick of Princeton, New Jersey. At the December 16, 2006, auction, New Life for the Noble Tree, the bidding was swift, as one Nakashima after another--each created for the Krosnicks to replace vintage pieces lost in a 1989 fire--came and went amid a flurry of phone offers and prices that climbed from high to higher to highest. The low pre-auction estimate on the Arlyn table was $300,000, and over the course of the bidding it was not unusual to see sideboards, coffee tables, and black-walnut Conoid chairs (a signature design going back to 1961; see below) fetching twice the anticipated prices. This was, after all, perhaps the most important Nakashima auction ever held, coming at a time when all things Nakashima have been boostered by such fans as Steven Spielberg and Diane von Furstenberg.

The 46 lots--curated by James Zemaitis, responsible for two previous Nakashima auction records and featured in the Fall 2005 issue of Men's Vogue--represented not only Nakashima's final work (he died in 1990 at age 85, in the midst of rebuilding the Krosnicks' collection) but the moment when he handed off operations to his daughter, Mira, who completed many of these masterworks. "My wood is better now, and my work is better now," the furniture maker said of this late phase, in which his designs tilted toward the Baroque, with riotous free edges, a profusion of butterfly joints, and daring explorations of such exotics woods as Persian walnut and Oregon myrtle. At the final rap of Meyer's gavel, New Life for the Noble Tree cleared $2.6 million. The sale of the Arlyn table--to Florida collector Rudy Ciccarello--set a new auction record for the designer.

Though trained as an architect, Nakashima began making furniture while sequestered in an internment camp for Japanese-Americans in Minidoka, Idaho, during World War II. (He grew up in Spokane, Washington, and earned a masters from MIT in 1930.) When offered the chance to relocate to Pennsylvania, he and his wife didn't hesitate. What they found in the rolling hills, old-growth forests, and sturdy yet elegant stone structures of Bucks County became a lasting foundation for their lives and work--work that continues, thanks to Mira Nakashima and the Nakashima Workshop in New Hope, Pennsylvania.

-- Samuel Moyer and Mark Rozzo

Read an article on Moyer's own furniture here.

A superb and rare set of eight "Conoid" chairs from the dining room, Melody Woods III, Princeton, New Jersey.