Collection by Aaron Britt
OK Gallery's SF Pop-Up
On November 17th, I went to the launch party of a very exciting collaboration between two great shops, Los Angeles design destination OK Gallery and the tightly edited San Francisco menswear boutique Maas & Stacks. "Maas & Stacks is OK" is a holiday pop-up shop in which Larry Schaffer of OK has brought a solid selection of highly givable books, household goods, and design objects to the high-end men's store. Schaffer talked about his "committment to design at an array of prices," and as little here exceeds $100 there are plenty of not-too-spendy options. The show runs through the holidays and is well worth a browsing if you're in San Francisco.
Here's a quick glimpse of the outside of Maas & Stacks, which is on Market St. near Church St. in the Castro neighborhood of San Francisco.
Otto Zoell is a co-owner of Maas & Stacks. He's known Larry Schaffer, the founder of OK Gallery, for most of his life. "My first memory of Larry is that he brought me a Ninja Turtle toy that my parents just couldn't find. It was the Shredder."
Good crowd. "In our store people mostly shop for themselves and we wanted to bring in some gift items that would be more in the spirit of the holidays," Otto told me.
This chess set was pretty amazing: In it, the main Republicans and Democrats involved in the 1972 election make up the pieces. Donkeys and elephants are the pawns.
Many of the objects in the shop are made in the USA like the slinky and ice cream scoop. The Marine Band harmonica is made in Germany.
A fine example of the mix of decorative objects, tabletop good, and books in the show.
This book, Living and Eating by John Pawson and Annie Bell, was pretty rad. Foodie minimalism.
Here's one of the standouts of the shop, a super abstracted nativity scene. Shaffer told me that he found it in the gift shop of the Bauhaus Archive in Berlin and now sells it for $34.50.
A pretty awesome Michael Jackson dress-up kit.
Larry Schaffer is holding up a great tabloid from the pop-up shop. He called the selection of goods a "tight, holiday edit of what is our best, simple, understated gift items."
Here's Otto's favorite book in the shop: The ISSC-NBS Method of Designating Colors and a Dictionary of Color Names. It's a pre-Pantone color family from 1964.
I liked these coasters from the L.A. brand Graf & Lantz. Made of industrial felt, the quartet cost just $18.
The center aisle of the shop was taken up by two tables filled with books and printed matter. The best of this lot was a small book of the architectural photos of Takashi Homma.
As I was leaving, Maas & Stacks's PR woman, Carly Yu, asked me what my favorite object in the show was. I liked a small chess set from MoMA.
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