Ihad one of those moments last December while visiting the exhibition for the single-owner auction at Phillips in New York mysteriously titled “The Collector: Icons of Design,” where I literally fell to my knees to run my hands over the stacked and laminated rosewood of one of the most legendary tables of the 20th century, Isamu Noguchi’s table for the A. Conger Goodyear house, executed in 1939. How glorious it was to actually touch what I had previously experienced only in Ezra Stoller’s period black-and-white photographs. How magnificent it was in person, so much larger than it appears in those photos, framed in the windows of Edward Durell Stone’s modern residential masterwork on Long Island. The boundless joy of attending design auction previews is the opportunity to cross the invisible gallery line and to stroke, perhaps even flip over, sit in, or hold up to the light. This incredible (and yes, at times even sensual) privilege of touch is something I have thought about again and again since donning the white gloves at the Indianapolis Museum of Art, where I have more than once set off the silent alarms in the galleries as I forgot my place and reached over to adjust a chair.

Rumor had it that the “Collector” who had put up most of the 33 lots was none other than Ronald S. Lauder. Though he has declined to confirm, it would not surprise me if the Goodyear table had wound up in Lauder’s hands. He is known in auction circles for his love of Noguchi, and I also recognized in the catalogue one of the few known examples of the designer’s in-70 cloud-form sofa (now paired with its even rarer ottoman, which had surfaced in an estate sale at Doyle New York, upholstered in a horrible mustard-and-ketchup-colored fabric). It set the auction record for postwar design when I was fortunate enough to sell it at Phillips in the spring of 2002 for $250,000, though of course, an auctioneer never reveals his clients.