Yesterday at Phillips de Pury in New York, the auction "Moss: Dialogues Between Art & Design" raked in more $5 million and smashed records for work by the likes of Maarten Baas, Hella Jongerius, and Patricia Urquiola. But while we're always pleased to see design taken a bit more seriously, it wasn't this auction's star power but rather its conceptual conceit that intrigued us so. Curated by Murray Moss — with many of the selections coming from Moss's own personal collection — the auction paired art and design pieces that seemed to share a common DNA, whether by virtue of material, technique, or appearance. The pairings were surprising and lovely, with the curves of Mattia Bonneti's plump purple velvet sofa echoing Luciano Castelli's reclining red nude, or the colored striations of Julien Carretero's To Be Continued bench causing the same sense of vertigo as Doug Argue's obsessive lines in (Untitled): Strata, 2011. (You can view the full catalog for yourself online here.) Perhaps best of all, the catalog was prefaced by an unusually personal story from Moss himself, who can seem a bit of a cipher to those not in his inner circle. We found the whole thing so interesting we've reprinted it in full here. Read on below, then follow our slideshow to see some of the highlights from last night.