Displaying items by tag: american studio furniture

Thirteen leading interior designers and design firms have been selected to curate rooms in the second annual Sotheby’s Designer Showhouse. Located in the auction house’s Manhattan headquarters, the Designer Showhouse will be brimming with an array of treasures, including mid century modern furniture, American studio furniture, Abstract Expressionist paintings, 18th and 19th century American antiques, European antiques, Old Master paintings, contemporary art, and much more. The Showhouse will be open to the public April 11-19, 2015, culminating in a dedicated sale on April 20, 2015.

Each space in the Designer Showhouse brings together fine and decorative arts from a variety of categories offered by Sotheby’s. In addition to reflecting each designer’s singular style, the Showhouse exemplifies the vital role that antiques and fine art play in creating dynamic contemporary interiors. According to Cullman & Kravis, the New York-based firm behind the Showhouse’s living room, “Antiques and fine art play a critical role in adding context...

Continue reading this article about the leading interior designers involved in the 2015 Sotheby's Designer Showhouse on InCollect.com.

Wendell Castle is a living legend. Widely considered the father of the American studio furniture  movement, Castle has spent more than five decades exploring the boundaries between fine art and craft, form and function. Astonishingly prolific and ceaselessly experimental, Castle’s sculptural designs have profoundly affected how we view furniture today.

Born in Kansas in 1932, Castle earned a  BFA in Industrial Design and a MFA in Sculpture from the University of Kansas. After graduating in 1961, he moved to Rochester, New York, where he established a permanent studio and began teaching at the Rochester Institute of Technology’s (RIT) School for American Craftsmen. Along with iconic designers and furnituremakers, including  George Nakashima, Sam Maloof, Wharton Esherick, and Arthur Espenet Carpenter, Castle helped shape the studio furniture movement throughout the 1960s and 1970s.

Visit InCollect.com to read more about the Wendell Castle exhibit at Friedman Benda.

 The Cranbrook Art Museum in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, is currently hosting “Paul Evans: Crossing Boundaries and Crafting Modernism,” the first comprehensive survey of the designer’s work. Paul Evans (1931-1987), a leading figure in the midcentury American studio furniture movement, used metal to create stunning sculptural pieces that defied what everyday objects looked like and how they were made.

“Crossing Boundaries and Crafting Modernism” features 68 works spanning Evans’ varied career. Evans, who studied at the Cranbrook Academy of Art, a leading institution of American contemporary design, began working with metal in the 1950s. During this time, Evans shared a studio with fellow furniture designer Phillip Lloyd Powell in New Hope, Pennsylvania. The pair often collaborated on pieces that melded Powell’s wood prowess and Evans’ metalworking skills. A number of objects from this period are included in the exhibition.