This secret Brooklyn archive contains a trove of design rarities. Here are 10 exceptional finds

New York has no shortage of venues to view great 20th- and 21st-century design – the Cooper Hewitt, the Brooklyn Museum, the Met and the Museum of Arts and Design, to name just a few.

Less common, though, are places to view rarities, prototypes and other design B-sides in an archive-like atmosphere, outside the constraints of an exhibition thesis or a permanent collection. The co-founders of R & Company – one of America’s most esteemed collectible design galleries – are looking to change that by opening their long-time storage facility Building 86 to the public for the first time.

The 16,000 sq ft warehouse, located in a former machine shop in the Brooklyn Navy Yard, housed the gallery’s permanent collection, designer archives, photo studio and administrative spaces for the better part of a decade. But co-founders Zesty Meyers and Evan Snyderman recognised an opportunity: ‘The idea of being able to share 30 years of collecting with our clientele seemed like a really great idea,’ says Snyderman. ‘Everything in this building has a story.’

Building 86 will be open, by appointment, to collectors, designers and the public alike. Items are displayed on towering shelves, in no particular order, allowing visitors to wander and discover. Here, you may bump into a work by a modernist titan. There, you may encounter a contemporary designer you’ve never heard of. It’s all meant to foster a sense of serendipity and discovery. ‘We have things from France, we have things from Denmark. We have things we’ve owned, collected, wanted, lived with, cherished, loved, found – you name it,’ says Meyers.

‘A bigger thing,’ he adds, ‘is we just get to have fun.’

Below, Snyderman and Meyers share their 10 favourite finds.

1. 'Sluggo' lamp by Wendell Castle

This is one of my favourite things of all time. Most people know Wendell for his work in wood. I sort of brought him out of retirement in a way about 25 years ago when he didn't have a gallery representing him. One of the things I found most interesting was this series of work that he created in the late ‘60s to early ‘70s. It was a very short period of time, about four years, that he took a break from working in wood and switched to working in fibreglass because he was inspired by what was happening with the Italian Radical Design movement through a show at MoMA called The New Domestic Landscape. He got tired, from what he told me, of ‘everything being brown.’ He wanted colour. Wendell also comes out of hot rod culture – he built racing muscle cars and things like that. He was always a car fanatic. This lamp is sparkly blue – It's like that hot rod color. He was also looking a the cartoons of the 1940s, like Sluggo from the Nancy comic strip. That has nothing to do with the shape of this. It's just like this odd, surrealist object, and it looks like a slug. It sits on the floor. It's a lamp, which only illuminates this little strip of clear plexiglass at the bottom, so it really doesn't function as a lamp – it just glows. The whole thing is absurd, and that's what I love about it. – Evan Snyderman

2. Modular cat toy by Verner Panton for Naef

[This cat] was produced by Naef, a great Swiss toy maker. But the thing is, you have to build and put it together by interlocking these six-sided cubes with these plastic clips, and it's really, really hard. So it failed as a product; it was supposed to be marketed to kids and the adults couldn't even put it together – it takes hours, and they're very fragile. It's harder than Lego, and so in a couple of years they stopped producing them. We have original boxes. We have original instructions. Obviously, if you can make the cat, you can make another shape. They came in different colours. Evan and I have been buying them for years, and we keep buying them if we find them – they’re that rare. We have sold them too and we've tried to buy them back. We have clients that bought them from us even in the '90s, and we've tried to buy back, and they won't sell them to us. No one wants to get rid of the good Verner Panton. – Zesty Meyers

3. 'African' Chair by Garry Knox Bennett

This chair is wild, and he was wild. Garry Knox Bennett was one of the early American studio furniture makers. He's a contemporary of Wendell Castle. He lived in Oakland, California. Coming out of school, he made very elaborate roach clips, like in the ‘60s, and jewellery. What he was selling became popular, and that's when he went into the furniture-making world. You can't see it in the photo, but there are these silver hand-hammered little nails that are on top of the seat. So it's very much like a combination of furniture and jewellery. A lot of his work has this kind of detail, this level of like very fine metalwork combined with eccentric, wild woodwork. He was quite a character. Most people don't know who he is, but I just find it really exciting. This is my own personal chair. I used it in my office for many, many years, but I just retired it because I didn't want to destroy it. – ES

4. Flat file by Poul Kjaerholm

Paul Kjaerholm mostly worked in Denmark, that was the country of wood carving, and he was a teacher at the Royal Academy. I don't know if he coined the term, but he called himself an interior architect. I've never seen a flat file executed by Danish cabinet makers. And the handles are so beautiful, and everyone that's ever bought them from us are only art collectors. And it makes so much sense. The handles are pine. Danish cabinet makers were able to do this. – ZM

5. 'Paramount' lamp by Lapo Binazzi

Lapo Binazzi is my favourite of the Italian Radical designers. He's the coolest person. He lives in Florence. He's 85 or so years-old now. He started Grupo UFO and was one of the most radical of the Radical designers. He did this series of lamps between 1972 and 1973. They were statements about Hollywood movie companies and the American dream. This one is about Paramount, with the mountain from the Paramount logo. This is part of our permanent collection. The base is ceramic, handmade by him, and then the umbrella is custom-made by an umbrella maker in Florence. He works with all these old artisans and people in the neighbourhood. These craftsmen are going away – like the handmade umbrella, this kind of thing doesn't really exist anymore. As pop-y and and funny as they are, Lapo’s lamps are also completely crafted. – ES

6. Model 4088 table lamp by Joe Colombo for Kartell

The top part of this lamp turns. This is a lamp in my own personal collection, but I've never had in one of my houses – it's just been in a box. There's a second version of that lamp that's much shorter, that was more heavily produced. I've only ever seen a couple of [this model] in my lifetime, so I bought it. I'm a giant fan of Joe Colombo. I'm a giant fan of the late '60s into the '70s and that sort of pop era. I love that he was that far ahead of his time, and it's great that we can put it in a vignette. – ZM

7. 'Codependent' light fixture by Katie Stout

This is Katie Stout at her best. This has individual shades. She mixes these forms together and calls them 'codependent', but it's only something she can create and think of in this way. It’s just stunning. The colours and the innocence of it– it looks like a little kid’s thing, it’s absolutely amazing. – ZM

8. 'Elephant Skin' candelabra by The Haas Brothers

This is a very early Haas Brothers work. We were their first gallery. And it’s huge. I mean, it stands probably three feet tall – it's almost Gothic in scale. This piece was made in 2013, around when we first started to work with them. They made a series of these large candle holders in bronze. It's sculpted out of clay and then cast into bronze. Each one is made in an edition of three. We sold all of them almost immediately. We acquired this one back from a client a couple years ago. It has the most beautiful patina on it. In fact, Niki Haas was here a couple of years ago and saw it. He was like, ‘Oh my God, we need to make these again. This is the coolest thing ever.’ They call them ‘elephant skin’ because they have this really interesting texture. They look like folded skin almost, like, soft and squishy looking, but they're obviously cast bronze. It's just beautiful. – ES

9. Five-piece sectional sofa by Roberto Matta

Roberto Sebastian Matta was a surrealist painter from Chile, and this is one of the few furniture pieces he ever made. He lived in Chile and then Italy for many years, and he worked with Gavina, which is the company that produced this. Eventually, Gavina was sold to Knoll, so that's why the Knoll factory then produced these.

I love how it creates this whole living environment; it's a sculpture, but then it transforms into a sofa. But then you can turn it into, like, a fort. You can turn it into a whole room. You can make multiple installations out of it. I love the playfulness of it, and the fact that it's really a work of art masquerading as a sofa. This particular one, I bought from a woman who inherited it from her parents, and it had sat in her Upper East Side New York apartment since the 1970s. – ES

10. Bed by Joaquim Tenreiro

This is a single bed, I mean, you could use it as a day bed. If you notice on the front end where the footboard is, it tapers up, and the the headboard tapers up to to this beautiful sliver of wood. It has caning in the headboard, and it just shows Tenreiro's craftsmanship. It's something that we've never seen before. We've had one bigger one that was more of a full or queen-size bed. But he is, by far, the best wood carver in the history of Brazil. We own part of his archive. I'm a huge fan. He was born in Portugal and immigrated to Brazil. I think he's one of the best from the 1940s to about 1970s. – ZM