Displaying items by tag: lamps

Renowned for its collection of lamps by Tiffany Studios, the New York Historical Society on Central Park West will renovate the Henry Luce III Center for the Study of American Culture and dedicate the space to displaying the 100 lamps it owns.

Designed by architect Eva Jiřičná, the 3,000-square-foot, two-story space is scheduled to open in early 2017, and will feature the Tiffany lamps lit in a darkened gallery, creating a dramatic, glowing effect for visitors.

Nearly a hundred examples of iconic Tiffany Studios works are forming the centerpiece of Sotheby’s sale of Tiffany and Prewar Design: The Warshawsky Collection in New York on May 19.

Led by the "Elaborate Peony" Lamp, circa 1910 (est. $600,000-$900,000), the variety of colorful glass works in mostly floral motifs is emblematic of the collection of noted Chicago businessman Roy Warshawsky and his wife Sarita, who assembled the works from the 1960s through the 1990s. There are also leaded glass lighting and windows, favrile glass, enamels, pottery, and bronze pieces produced by the firm founded by Louis Comfort Tiffany.

Beginning on July 12, Neutra VDL Studio and Residences, the former Los Angeles home of the Austrian-American architect Richard Neutra, will replace all mid-century furnishings with their Cold War-era counterparts from Eastern Europe. The objects, including chairs, tables, lamps, phones, pictures, books, and cooking utensils, will be provided by the nearby Wende Museum, which is devoted to preserving the Cold War artifacts of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. Although the two design cultures share aesthetic tendencies, they have often been examined separately. The provocative installation, titled “Competing Utopias,” will present modern design from the East and West in a unifying context.

According to the Neutra House, the installation is meant to raise more questions than it could possibly answer. For example, Why do design objects from the East fit so seamlessly, often invisibly, into a high design mid-century home from the West? The exhibition looks at the Cold War era from a broader perspective than the typical political lens, focusing on the global competition that took place to see who would define what modernity looked like and how it functioned.

 The Nordic Heritage Museum in Seattle, Washington, is celebrating the classic elegance of Scandinavian mid-century design with the exhibition “Danish Modern: Design for Living.” Organized by The Museum of Danish America in Elk Horn, Iowa, “Danish Modern” features simple and sophisticated furnishings designed and crafted in Denmark in the 1950s and 1960s -- a particularly prosperous period for the style.

The exhibition includes household items such as toys, lamps, and serving pieces, as well as a swath of chairs. Celebrated for its form, function, and consideration for the human body, it’s no surprise that a plethora of iconic chairs originated during the heyday of Danish Modern design. The show at the Nordic Heritage Museum features Arne Jacobsen’s cocoon-like “Egg” chair, graceful “Swan” Chair, and stackable “Seven" chair as well as Helge Sibast’s spindly “No. 8” chair and Hans Wegner’s curvaceous “Round” chair, which was so popular during the middle of the 20th century that it became known simply as “the Chair.”