eBay Furniture Grails
What’s this? An eBay column not written by JTTB’s resident eBae Mary Sniatkowski? This is blasphemy! Well, yes, but not quite. This is the inaugural edition of Take That Frank Ocean Poster Off Your Wall, where I, a man of impeccable taste, will provide recommendations on how to make your apartment not look like shit. This way, when you finally manage to bring a girl home, you won’t be ashamed that your only furniture is a plastic folding table and a gaming chair. While Mary’s column has value, odds are right now you’re spending more time sitting at home on your couch than you are getting fits off. Am I saying my column is better than Mary’s? More relevant? It’s not my place to say. I’ll let you decide.
Whether you eat meals there, watch porn there, or entertain there (and God I hope it’s not all 3), the living room is often the most visible part of the home. Not all of us can simply fill our living room with a wall-to-wall Pierre Paulin sofa like the aforementioned Frank Ocean, but that doesn’t mean you can’t move past the Ikea furniture you bought when you moved into your first college apartment.
I’m so sick of Eames chairs. Everyone has an Eames chair, or at least a knockoff of an Eames chair. This Marcel Breuer D4 is a part of the permanent collection at the Museum of Modern Art, and for only $4,650 you can have two in your living room, at the beach, or even at your lake house so you can sip Suntory from your Snow Peak mug on the dock while you flex nuts on passersby. You could even take them camping if you can get past the price tag (the author highly recommends that you do). And because this specific set is made from leather and not the Bauhaus-typical polyacrylic, they’ll only get better with age.
A green sofa will pair nicely with the myriad of houseplants you bought on The Sill to impress women and pretend like you have a hobby. This particular green sofa happens to come from Paul Frankl, whose notable clients included Cary Grant and Alfred Hitchcock.
Isamu Noguchi isn’t just the namesake of the trendiest museum in Queens, he also made the greatest coffee table of all time for Herman Miller. Please put your feet somewhere else.
What would a coffee table be without a coffee table book? The best coffee table books imply that you both have an esoteric and niche interest and are much smarter than your guest. Julia Chaplin’s Tulum Gypset explores Tulum as “a rare and successful modern experiment in consciousness and sophistication.” Yea, that’ll do.
You can’t put cups on your Noguchi coffee table, and these are the WASPiest coasters I could find on eBay. Now when Stanton, Remington, and Chloë Sevigny’s baby come over to visit post-quarantine, these coasters will act as a great conversation piece.
I’ve nicknamed this mirror-topped side table “Breckenridge,” because children do coke in the bathroom but adults go skiing from the comfort of their 1930s Art Deco couch.
The functionality of a great credenza is impossible to understate. You need a place to keep your Xbox, your sound system, and your Japanese Meditation bell. This Florence Knoll Walnut Credenza will keep all your electronics out of sight, because nothing ruins a room more than a tangle of cords.
Fuck it, why not. This is a power move, all ethical considerations aside.
When your poker set costs more than the buy-in for the High Roller Room at the Bellagio, you know you’ve made it.
