Displaying items by tag: furniture

All styles eventually go out of fashion. Colonial hoop dresses, Victorian handlebar moustaches, and 1960s shag carpeting all enjoyed great popularity before falling out of favor. Similar cycles of taste have governed the history of furniture design. Going out of Style: 400 Years of Changing Tastes in Furniture, an exhibition presented by the Milwaukee Art Museum, displayed four centuries of major American furniture styles alongside scathing commentary written in the period by designers, architects, and writers.

Their critiques—which range from sarcastic to downright ruthless—reveal powerful opinions that helped drive the ebb and flow of taste from generation to generation. While the harsh assessments of the past may seem unfounded to antiques enthusiasts today, they remind us that most period styles—even the perennial favorites—were out of fashion at one time or another

During the early twentieth-century, mass-production dominated how products were manufactured in the United States. Automated factories churned out huge amounts of standardized products, including everything from automobiles to furniture. In response to this widespread conformity, many American designers began creating works grounded in historic traditions, favoring the handcrafted over the machine-made, the unique over the commonplace.

The Delaware Valley and Pennsylvania’s bucolic Bucks County became centers for the production of these thoughtfully-made works. In the 1940s, the Japanese-American woodworker George Nakashima settled in New Hope, Pennsylvania, where he established a studio and a reputation as a leading member of the first generation of American Studio furnituremakers. Nakashima was joined by a swathe of iconic craftsmen, including Phillip Lloyd Powell, Paul Evans, and Robert Whitley, all of whom produced custom-designed functional furniture that blurred the lines between craft, sculpture, and design.

Piece by piece, the furnishings of the last Hawaiian queen, Liliuokalani, are returning to Iolani Palace here, on a grassy square wedged between office buildings and populated by egrets. The royal property was dispersed through auctions and giveaways around 1900, but benefactors are retrieving it from antiques stores, thrift shops, backyards, storage units, museums and government offices worldwide.

During a recent tour of the palace, an Italianate 1880s building that became a museum in 1978, its curator, Heather Diamond, and its docent educator, the historian Zita Cup Choy, described how chairs, tables, dinnerware and cuff links had ended up scattered.

Settled by the Dutch and claimed by the English, New York, from the start, was “a Babel of peoples—Norwegians, Germans, Italians, Jews, Africans . . . Walloons, Bohemians, Munsees, Montauks, Mohawks, and many others,” as writer Russell Shorto has observed. In the landscapes they shaped, buildings and furniture they made, New Yorkers created a place “unlike any other, either in the North American colonies or anywhere else.” This unique legacy is reflected in New York furniture featuring elaborate Dutch-inspired turnings, solid English construction methods, French sculptural carving, and Germanic painted decoration. In assembling the collection at Winterthur, Henry Francis du Pont created a world-class destination for viewing New York furniture in all of its splendid variety.

On February 12, 2015, Modernism Week -- a multifaceted event aimed at celebrating and fostering appreciation of midcentury modern architecture, art, and design -- will begin in Palm Springs, California. Launched in 2006 by a group of local design and architecture aficionados, Modernism Week has grown to include over 100 events. Among the exhibitions, home tours, film screenings, and lectures, is Modernism Week’s catalyst -- the Palm Springs Modernism Show and Sale.

Now in its fifteenth year, the Palm Springs Modernism Show and Sale will be held from February 13-16, 2015, at the Palm Springs Convention Center. The show will feature 85 national and international dealers offering everything from furniture and jewelry to fine and decorative arts. Exhibitors will offer works representing all art and design movements of the twentieth century, but a special emphasis will be placed on midcentury modern. A preview reception on February 13, 2015, will give collectors and enthusiasts the chance to browse and shop the show before it opens to the public on February 14, 2015. Two dealers to look for at the show are Archive of Laguna Hills, California, and Bridges Over Time of Newburgh, New York.

On Sunday, February 1, 2015, the 61st iteration of the inimitable Winter Antiques Show drew to a close at the Park Avenue Armory in New York City. Over the course of the ten-day event, collectors, first-time buyers, museum curators, interior designers, and dealers, took to the show floor to browse and snap up fine art, furniture, and decorative objects from antiquity through the 1960s (Fig. 1).

The show kicked off on Thursday, January 22, 2015, with an Opening Night Preview Party that welcomed nearly 2,000 attendees, including Martha Stewart, Michael Bloomberg and Diana Taylor, Arie and Coco Kopelman, Ellie Cullman, Thomas Jayne, Bunny Williams and John Rosselli, Sandra Nunnerley, and John Douglas Eason. The Preview Party, which benefited the East Side House Settlement, a community-based organization in the South Bronx, gave guests an opportunity to peruse and purchase works before the show opened to the public on Friday, January 23, 2015.

Each year,  the Palm Beach Jewelry, Art & Antique Show welcomes a flock of eager collectors, leading art and design professionals, and top international dealers to the Palm Beach County Convention Center. A hallmark of the Palm Beach social season, the elegant show presents premier offerings ranging in style from classical to contemporary and thoughtful programming that fosters the understanding and appreciation of art and antiques.

One of the most highly-anticipated elements of the 2015 Palm Beach Jewelry, Art & Antique Show is the Designer Showcase, which features six captivating vignettes created by the world’s most influential interior designers, including Campion Platt, Suzanne Kasler, Gil Walsh, William and Phyllis Taylor of Taylor & Taylor, Lars Bolander, and Jennifer Garrigues. The designers have been asked to create spaces using fine art, furniture, and decorative accessories from exhibitors in the show.

On Friday keynote speaker Diane Keaton, the "Father of the Bride" and "Annie Hall" actress and style icon, will open the 2015 Antiques & Garden Show of Nashville. Keaton has authored two books on residential design and a recently published best-seller, "Let's Just Say It Wasn't Pretty." The Antiques & Garden Show will be held Jan. 30-Feb. 1 at Music City Center in downtown Nashville.

Also featured in this 25^th anniversary year are celebrated interior and horticultural designers; five interactive, specially designed gardens; and more than 150 sought-after antique, art and horticultural dealers from the U.S. and Europe. Their on-site booths offer visitors a one-stop, one-of-a-kind shopping opportunity for everything from fine paintings, furniture and jewelry to unique garden urns, fountains, and repurposed vintage pieces.

Sotheby’s announced the auction, on March 18 in Paris, of the private collection of the Dillée family, a renowned Parisian dynasty of specialists and collectors of furniture and works of art. Consisting of 450 lots, the sale will be divided into two sessions, including French decorative arts from the 17th to the 19th centuries, Old Master paintings and drawings, bronzes, scientific objects and Antique arms.

Mario Tavella, Deputy Chairman of Sotheby’s Europe and Chairman Private Collections, said: “Our auction house is deeply honoured to be entrusted once again with the sale of an iconic collection of works of art, which, in this instance, has been carefully selected by the expert eyes of three generations of the Dillée family. Their Cabinet d’Expertise has seen some of the most beautiful objects go through its doors before being passed onto collectors, auction houses and institutions. We are hoping that the Dillée sale will attract new and old generations of collectors, as well as the notable museums that the Dillée family has dealt with in the past.”

On Wednesday, January 7, 2015, Christie’s announced that Ambra Medda will be the new Global Creative Director of the auction house’s 20/21 Design Department. Based in London, the department is dedicated to furniture, lighting, ceramics, and sculpture from the Art Nouveau, Arts & Crafts, Art Deco, Modernist, and Contemporary movements. The auction house holds 20/21 Design sales twice annually in New York (June and December), Paris (May and November), and London (April and October).

Medda, an accomplished curator, co-founded Design Miami alongside developer Craig Robbins in 2005 and served as the fair’s director for five years. With annual shows in Basel, Switzerland, and Miami, Design Miami has emerged as one of the world’s leading celebrations of design culture and commerce.