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“Please help me find the cream-colored sofa with a wavy back in Luca Guadagnino’s 2017 movie, ‘Call Me by Your Name.’ Not the pinkish velvet one.” — Tangi, Los Angeles I love the lush worlds that Guadagnino brings to life in his movies, and I’m particularly fond of this one. In 2016, T photographed the filmmaker’s apartment in Crema, Italy. Our shoot coincided with the making of “Call Me by Your Name,” which was being partly filmed at Villa Albergoni, a fortress that had been converted into a 16th-century private home in nearby Moscazzano. Guadagnino kindly invited us to the set on the last day of production. The furniture looked very much like it had been in the house for decades or longer, but much of it had been brought in by the interior designer Violante Visconti di Modrone, a longtime friend of Guadagnino’s. This sofa, however, belonged to the homeowners.
In the movie — which is about a teenage boy named Elio (Timothée Chalamet) who falls in love with Oliver (Armie Hammer), a visiting graduate student, during an Italian summer in the 1980s — the sofa sits in a wide corridor that extends from the entrance down the length of Elio’s charmingly dilapidated family home. I figured it was an antique and that, based on the curves of the legs and the serpentine back, it was likely from the 18th century. The carved dark wood frame — and the simple fact that it was in this villa — made me think it was probably Italian. To track down more information, I reached out to Dennis Harrington, the head of European Furniture at Sotheby’s. According to Harrington, it’s a classic northern Italian sofa from the 18th century. The dark wood looks to be walnut, which was used to make furniture in the region at that time. I asked Harrington where you might find such an antique. “They do come up at auction, although not as much as they used to,” he said. “Mostly in Italy, but also in the U.S. and the U.K.” More surprising to me was how much he estimated such a sofa might cost. I figured it would be too expensive for most people to consider buying a 300-year-old antique from Christie’s or Sotheby’s, but Harrington told me that pieces like this can go for as little as $3,000 to $5,000 at auction (including auction house commissions, shipping but not necessarily any possible reupholstering), around the price of a couch from Crate & Barrel or Restoration Hardware. The reason for this, he said, is that when it comes to furniture, like fashion, tastes ebb and flow. While classical sofas were popular for a couple of decades beginning in the 1980s, in recent years the cultural palate has shifted; antiques aren’t as widely coveted as they once were. Don’t get me wrong: A few thousand dollars isn’t cheap, but pieces like this were built to last and, if well looked after, could last another 200 years.
If the idea of buying furniture at auction is overwhelming, try the retail route by searching on a site like 1stDibs (where I found this pair of 18th-century Italian Rococo sofas), or even Google (where I found this gilded one). Alternately, you could look for someone who makes replicas of old furniture. Bear in mind that both options could cost a great deal more money. For those who are open to bidding, I’d suggest setting up alerts on the auction houses’ websites for sales from the European or Continental Furniture department. Familiarize yourself with the market, and when you see one you like, go for it. The process, although it can be exhilarating, requires more patience than buying something outright. Even if you make the maximum offer online, someone with a higher bid could swoop in and close the deal. But don’t be discouraged: The chase, as Guadagnino suggests in his movie, is all part of the fun.
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