Much of what Zemaitis sells is just for display, though he has many clients who use the work for interior design.

Porochista Khakpour: The work that I sell for the most part is meant primarily for looking at. Nonetheless, many of our clients . . . Many of our biggest clients at auction are interior designers or interior designers/architects who are both buying furniture for their clients to use to put into the media room, but also serving as curators of their clients’ lifestyle and their clients’ taste. So a . . . I mean one of the . . . If you were to say, “What’s my best seller in my world?” Well bestseller is a Nakashima coffee table. Because here is this gorgeous slab of wood – “the soul of the tree”, as Nakashima famously said – that was created in the ‘60s or the ‘70s. And it was, you know, made by Nakashima and the men and women that work in his studio. And if you were a doctor or a lawyer in Princeton, New Jersey, you drove out there. You bought the coffee table from him, and a year later it was delivered to you. You got sketches of it. He helped you . . . He helped pick out the piece with you. If you look at that, well today’s collector is still using the coffee table in the same way as the first owner is. So when that piece that was, you know . . . is sold by the original owner with me at auction, the person buying it is more than likely putting it in their living room in front of their sofa just like that original client in New Jersey did. And so it is going to be used. And they are going to put, you know, coffee table books on it and do things like that. But there’s still a lot of what I sell today that is more about stand alone kind of sculptural aura, definitely.

Recorded on: 1/30/08