WOBBLING ISSUES

Does your wooden dining room chair wobble? Cut a slice off a cork and put the circular piece under the short leg. Once you determine the right thickness for the cork pad, glue it to the bottom of the leg.

ART BASEL MIAMI 2008

Art Basel Miami 2008

Just back from Art Basel and Art Design in Miami, one of the largest art and design shows in the world. ("Art" includes paintings, drawings, photographs, things that hang on the wall or stand on the floor or table and look good. "Design" includes chairs, tables, dinnerware and things that look good and are useful.) I see things through the eyes of a "collector of the past," so my views are biased. I noticed things at the shows that had borrowed from the past.

Moss Gallery of New York City is known for selling the latest modern pieces, so I was surprised to see a set of Bavarian furniture made by Studio Job of the Netherlands. There were six different Indian rosewood pieces with colorful laser-cut inlay of animals, birds and trees. Seventeen different colored dyes and many types of wood were used. It looked like a child's drawing of a farm. Very different from the other furniture at the show--a LOT more color--but at $70,000 to $125,000 for one piece, it seemed too playful and different to sell

well. Shows what I know about the buyers of the ultra-modern. I heard three of the six-piece sets sold in the first two days.

The good news about the show is that the economy did not ruin the show--although the early newspaper reports said it did. The crowds were a little smaller and buying carefully. Last year it was "Grab it as soon as you see it." This year it was "Take your time, check to see if the price could be lower, and buy carefully." There have been many doom-and-gloom articles about the collecting world, but we have seen that "good" will sell, "great" will still sell for high prices, and "ordinary" has problems unless it's useful (like a chair or kitchen bowls). But all require extra effort in marketing and display. (A longer report, "Everything That's Old Is New Again," will be in our February "Kovels on Antiques and Collectibles" newsletter.)

JACOB & JOSEF KOHN

Jacob & Josef Kohn

Q: We found six old chairs in a 100-year-old farmhouse that we are restoring. This label is on the bottom of the seat of the chairs. How old are they and what are they worth?

A: Your chairs were made by Jacob Kohn (1791-1868) and his son, Josef (1814-1884), of Vienna, Austria. They may have started out in the lumber industry in 1850 but were making furniture by 1867. Their chairs were similar to the bentwood chairs Thonet made. In 1914 the company merged with Mundus, a holding company in Vienna, and became Kohn-Mundus. Kohn-Mundus merged with Thonet in 1922. The motto in the mark, "Semper Sursum," means "Always Rising." Your chairs were made in the early 1900s, before 1914. Value: about $100 each.