Our Obsession with Vintage: A Grand Affair

The three Japanese designers were completely consumed by collecting American vintage goods and furniture… The spark that ignited our fervent passion, which has since cooled, was undoubtedly our boss, Mr. Tamotsu Yagi. His collection was beyond anything an interior design magazine could showcase, eliciting nothing but sighs of admiration.

We regularly scoured antique shows held several times a year in and around San Francisco, as well as every single antique shop in every sleepy, local town nearby. In San Francisco, we saw people with AIDS as a matter of course. America was enjoying an economic boom, and as Christmas approached (in hindsight), stores like Crate & Barrel were packed with people, and it felt like they spent money lavishly on housewares, interiors, and furniture.





The vibrancy of that era, and our grand obsession with vintage, now feel like mere nostalgic fragments of the 80s. It was a time of irresponsibility, devoid of social contribution, and the vast sums of money that vanished into our collections… Regardless, even as my collecting fervor has completely subsided, I am left with a substantial vintage collection: salt and pepper shakers, Fire King Depression glassware, ceramic pitchers that were once given away with refrigerator purchases in the 40s, and the melamine tableware from the 50s that I myself used so much as a child, along with numerous masterpieces from that era by designers like Eames, Russel Wright, and Raymond Loewy.

There is a single truth here.

It is that the true essence of design power still undeniably exists within the vanished world of vintage modernism. From Bauhaus to Art Deco, Nouveau, and High Concept & Technology (Hi-Tech), the richness of design born from the energy of these eras, spanning from the 1920s to the early 80s, is captured within these small salt and pepper containers and cute melamine cups. This power will likely never be replicated.

Over several installments, I will share a small part of this poignant collection.