I don't recall you posting anything like that before, I prefer sideboards that are taller but I actually like the front of it. It's different but not in a bad way necessarily.

Love them. As a kid in the 50's, I remember playing with the Eames cards that we got from Cranbrook. Very texturally rich and interesting. The sideboard reminds me of the cards. Nice memories.

I love the first picture but am surprised by the smallness in the second photo. I would like it heftier.

The front looks like 4 old type trays with stuff from mom's junk drawer glued into them. Not in a bad way...

Could these doors be made, assuming one had the patience?

New to me - I quite like it, a colourful work of art, really.

These are made out of cast and welded bronze and enameling, with slate tops usually. I imagine they weigh a ton. They are not small really, this one is probably 6 or more feet in length and 34-36" high. It's a big dining room.

I like them. It looks great in the staged pic. Do you know who the designer was? Thanks for posting these! Very cool!

These are Paul Evans Studio from the 1960s to early 70s. He also designed pieces for Directional Furniture.

They are enameled constructed pieces of art, the prototypes of the current wood knock offs and probably would be more popular "here" if people had seen a real one. But maybe not!

I was referring specifically to the Eames cards, which were all different, lots of designs. I was not referring to the furniture design.

I would say about five years ago, and about three years ago I posted examples of these because the prices were going up and up. Suddenly they were regularly commanding $40-50,000, then $100,000, and then the one with the Rago watermark hit $219,750.

Much of the commentary, was "not for me", and then there was the round of "hideous" and "another example of more money than taste" comments, and that sort of thing.

I liked these before I really understood Brutalism as a whole idea and movement, just because of the complexity, and on some level, impracticality, of an extremely heavy bronze and slate piece of furniture with Bifold Doors on the front, often meant to be balanced on a pedestal or hung from the wall, which the above examples are. I can remember when these were sold at prices that were approachable to a more average person, who had some money to invest in a piece of furniture as art, not at prices that would buy a house in much of the country.

Pal, I do remember you posting these before. I like the look of it in the room above.

But if I ever see one at an estate sale where someone thinks it's trash, I'll grab it. :)

I love it too, but I don't think the style is for everyone. I bought a brutalist frame at a charity shop a couple of years ago & sold it to a friend of mine with a MCM shop, it's still there with a very small price tag on it. I think she needs to raise the price so people will notice how fabulous it really is.

I don't recall seeing these before either. Not what I can afford for sure or my style but I could see using it in a fun way. Quite a statement.

I believe I commented on your previous post about Brutalist furniture that I owned such bedroom furniture by Lane from the early 1970s through early 1990s. It was free standing and weighed a ton. Loved it.

I love these...

I thought they might be Paul Evans. I'm not a brutalist fan but these I like, especially seeing the small size in the staged photo. I think partly it's the colors that attract me. I can't believe how much they went up in value! Wow!

These are art in my opinion, I would see this as an investment but I would have to research to see if it would hold its value if it went out of favor at some point. As a piece of art, its subjective to personal tastes. This piece looks to me like it could complement many styles of décor.

These would only be a sure investment if you had one when the value was lower and you wanted to sell it now. I seem to think that these were available on eBay less than 20 years ago for less than $5000, which I didn't have to spend on such a thing at that time.

But furniture is tricky, and much furniture that has held high value for a number of decades has dropped in value more recently. American Federal furniture unless it's a museum quality piece can be cheaper than new furniture. Stickley et al has dropped in value. The only pieces that I have seen retain solid value are very rare things and other Bucks Co. Studio furniture like George Nakashima and Wharton Esherick. So it's pretty risky. Plus the value is at an all-time high so I buying low and selling high is not an option. And the bottom could fall out of the market at any time, just like it did with the art market in the 80s.

Some people are so rich of course, that they will pay $8M for a piece of furniture, like someone did for a previously unknown Garvan Carver table, but that won't sustain an entire market. The buyers for those pieces are so limited that they all know (or at least know Of) each other. I knew someone who had a lesser Garvan Carver piece and when a matching piece was coming on to the market, my acquaintance called the other possible buyers that he knew (maybe a dozen total in the world) and said. "We already have the other piece to the pair, so we would appreciate it if maybe you would just let us get it at a reasonable price without driving the prices up out of control".

The Evans pieces are still production pieces even though many of them are unique, so they are a completely different animal.

Even as art I don't think that these are a sound investment. Like art you buy it because you like it at what the price is at that time. Unless you buy a relatively unknown artist and hope for the best, art isn't really a predictable investment. Peggy Guggenheim and Albert Barnes didn't amass their collections by buying well-known pieces people were competing for, they bought the work of relative unknowns. Peggy bought for grocery and rent money and Barnes' collection was vilified as garbage by the powers that be for a number of years.

I think part of the reason it works in the photo is that the rest of the furniture is so simple and the sideboard is given a lot of space. If it were crammed into a smaller room with more elaborate furniture, I think the effect would be very different. They've treated the sideboard like a work of art in a gallery. (Which follows up katrina_ellen's point that it really is art.)

Which, I think, points to why it would be hard to pull off in an ordinary home. You'd have to furnish and decorate your entire space around the single piece. Nothing wrong with that, of course, and people do it, but my lifestyle with a teenager and pets and whatnot doesn't really lend itself to furniture-as-art. Just an observation.

I googled his work understand the appeal. Or what are knock-offs. I read a lot of descriptions as "Paul Evans-style."

I think my freshman college dorm was in the brutalist style.

ETA an interesting article I came across about brutalism as architecture, and you can see the relation in style to brutalist furniture. I've seen many of these buildings in Milwaukee, and it's true, they don't upon initial look "age well."

Palimpsest, it helped that Peggy Guggenheim had artists like Marcel Duchamp to advise her on the art to buy!

And just to support your point, we remember that Guggenheim backed Pollock when no one had heard of him, but we forget the failures. Art investors have to buy a lot from varied sources counting on a few to succeed and a few to flop. You mention Barnes--one of the things that struck me on touring the galleries is that while the overall quality of the art is mind-boggling, there are a lot of pieces by artists you've never heard of scattered between the Matisses and Van Goghs. The Barnes Collection is unusual because you see everything he acquired, including the pieces that haven't really held up (at least in current valuation--that can always change.)

Anyway, my point is that if I ever can afford to buy art (a doubtful event, but you never know) I would buy what I love and want to have in my house rather than think of it as an investment, because the art market is so, so unpredictable.

I like color. I like stuff. That makes my eyes hurt. I don't care what it costs, it is a big NO.

I've seen many of these buildings in Milwaukee, and it's true, they don't upon initial look "age well."

There is a lot of bad brutalism, and bad brutalism is very bad. But lots of architecture does not age well for various reasons. Modernism and brutalism are highly susceptible because there so little there to age gracefully or patina to begin with.

I agree about proper "placement" of pieces like this. Furniture and art with a strong impact can look really bad in the wrong place, or make other things around it look bad by comparison. Put really fine piece of furniture in a room of ordinary things and there are no favors done all around. The ordinary things may be perfectly fine on their own.