The NYC Furniture Dealer’s Instagram Feed Celebrating Design Titans Of The 20th-Century
By Something CuratedFrom Jacques Adnet and Jean Prouvé, to Pierre Chareau and Richard Neutra, furniture dealer and interior designer Michael Bargo’s diligent Instagram feed, updated daily, is a joyous education in design. The New York-based creative’s page is a carefully curated assemblage of images showcasing the heyday of 20th-century furniture design, peppered with stylish shots of his changing surroundings and his adorable pets.
Expanding on his inspirations in an interview for MATCHESFASHION, Bargo tells: “All of the interior titans inspire me constantly. I love and admire Renzo Mongiardino as much as [Ettore] Sottsass. I’m enormously inspired by Jacques Grange – he has an uncanny ability to mix elegance and humour in a way only the French can achieve. Jean Royère is someone I look to constantly. I always find great inspiration looking at artists’ homes. They have an incredible ability to live with colour and elegance in a very natural way, too.”
Trained as an interior designer, Bargo’s entrepreneurial approach to the field has led him to explore many diverse aspects of his industry, including the opening of his own gallery space in Chinatown. Having worked for a New York interiors firm, and later set up his own business, four years ago Bargo began dealing antiques, largely motivated by his impulse to shop.
Housed within an inconspicuous Chinatown mall in Lower Manhattan is his appointment-only retail space, Galerie Michael Bargo. Speaking with AnOther about his business, Bargo explains: “It just sort of happened because I have a compulsive shopping disease. I was buying tons of stuff at auctions and flea markets and travelling around. It just got to the point where I had so much inventory that I was selling it to clients for projects but then realised I had plenty left that I could be selling to architects, designers and friends of mine.”
Initially, Bargo was selling these pieces out of his Brooklyn apartment. He goes on: “I would rotate the furniture out of the space every few months as things sold, and a lot of friends would come over and see the pieces and buy them. As that sort of grew into something more significant I decided to open an actual commercial space, which has been really fun and exciting.”
Feature image: Jean Prouvé, School Desk, 1946 (via Pinterest)