Obsolete

Briefly in LA. My wife and I had a tiny window to pop over to Culver City and make a pilgrimage to Obsolete Inc, a gallery and antiques dealer whose taste and photography I am wild about. I've written about them before - this is typical of their daily output on Instagram - world class pieces with world class photography:

It did not disappoint in the flesh.

First impressions

This store does so many things really well. The owner came from the NYC fashion world and has been in business in LA for 25 years, so he's seasoned. He has the recipe down.

I apologize in advance for my photography, which is not seasoned. I thought I was going to make a video so that's all I really got. Most of these photos are from video stills.

But let's talk about them, not me.

First lighting. After you visit Obsolete you realize, "Oh, so basically everyone else sucks at lighting."

It is as good as it gets. Hundreds of different spotlights and lamps throughout the entire establishment exude that warm identical Kelvin setting. There is no break in the ambience anywhere. No LED to be found. The consistency is what gets you. Apparatus in NYC is the only other store I've seen that rivals this place.

(Just imagine if the photo was clear and not from a video still)

Just a smooth subtle glow of lamps and spotlights creating a variety of scenes and vignettes.

I understand practicality and affordability and energy standards and needing to see while you cook and blah blah blah but it's yet another moment where I say "why does a restaurant or gallery have to be so different from a home?"

Wouldn't it make so much more sense if a home was designed with the same mood & appeal in mind? I'm standing in a store that's selling you the literal ideal of a home for an extremely high premium - they have a strong incentive to get it right. Shouldn't we perhaps follow their lead?

I do think overhead directional spotlights are essential for the true vignette look and plan on making greater use of these in projects going forward. The best of 1980's design owes its visceral moodiness to this.

Given that Obsolete is an antiques gallery and sources primarily from the Europe, there is quite a lot of sculpture art. This is another thing that seems almost entirely absent from the design vernacular today. Acceptable forms of home art have been reduced to mainly 2D abstract painting.

But if you look at the golden eras of interior design, there would have been all kinds of things that take up physical space, and not just relegated to the wall.

Gae Aulenti, 1968 via Cosmos

Physically interacting with an object like a statue or hand carved piece of furniture is such a nice experience and we should do it more. The way it plays with light is wonderful.

Few more things to note. In general, what Obsolete is doing is mixing pieces from a variety of different time periods together very well. This is my style, it may or may not be yours. It seems to be what many interior designers have done well for a long time. Agnostic to time period, we assemble things that compliment each other and make rooms interesting.

The building itself is pretty unassuming from the exterior and it's really just a warehouse inside. There's a lot of nice rustic but not fancy texture. Exposed beams, with visible paper covered batten insulation, heavily scuffed white epoxy concrete floors. Drywall, some of it covered with wallpaper. I am sure that if you toured it when it was empty you'd feel that this was nothing particularly special.

That said, it's really a testament to what you can create with a few pieces of furniture, a great rug, some art and of course world-class lighting. I remember when I moved into one of my first college apartments and my roommate said "it's really not about the apartment, if you put nice stuff in it, it feels nice." The sage wisdom of a 19 year old college student still rings true today. You can make something sizzle by just putting the right pieces in it.

There is also a palpable scent when you walk in. Not sure if I have ever talked about scents, but it really adds to the experience. You are transported.

I looked over at my wife after we had been inside for a couple minutes and said, "This is really dialed. Everything. The lights, the mood, the smell, the sets. It's perfect" She agreed.

Whatever is going on in this place, it's what I am after. A masterful recipe for ambience. There are plenty of good things to eat, but once in a while you order a dish that ravishes the mouth and imprints a memory. It's so good that you want to tell your friends about it.

That's what this is.