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C B M Y ERALD STUDIO FURNITURE FURNITURE STUDIO STUDIO FURNITUREFURNITU of the RENWICK GALLERY FURNITURE Smithsonian American Art MuseuMuseum of the THE EIGHTY-FOUR PIECES OF STUDIO FU RENWICK GALLERY owned by the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art Museum constitute one of the largest Smithsonian American Art Museum assemblages of American studio furniturefurnit in the nation. Three former administrators—Lloydadministrators—L Herman, Michael Monroe, and Kenneth Trapp—amassedTrapp— a seminal collection that samples studio furniture’s great diversity. From the carefully craftedcra stools of Tage Frid to the art deco chest paintepainted by Rob Womack, from the one-of-a-kind Ghost Clock sculp- of the WICK ture by Wendell Castle to the limited production LERY stool by David Ebner, the collection highlightsh the astonishing variety of the American studiost furniture Smithsonianhsonian Americancan Art movement. Museumuseum In this catalogue, author Oscar P. FitzgeraldF documents each piece of furniture in a descriptive, illustrated entry. He also recounts the history of the collection’s formation in an introductoryintroducto essay, which illuminates the rationale and aesaesthetic choices of each curator and notes various donorsdonor and support organizations. Finally, Fitzgerald’s statstatistical analysis of the collection, formulated from detaileddet inter- views with the surviving artists, casts newn light on workshop practices, marketing concerns,concer and other aspects of the contemporary studio furniturefu move- ment. A foreword by noted scholar andan curator Paul Greenhalgh gives readers a brilliabrilliant overview of the studio furniture field and the intimateint role furniture plays in daily life. Spine:0.75” 0.0625” 4” NO:004 STUDIO FURNITURE STUDIO FURNITURE of the RENWICK GALLERY Smithsonian American Art Museum Oscar P. Fitzgerald Foreword by Paul Greenhalgh Smithsonian American Art Museum Washington, D.C. in association with Fox Chapel Publishing East Petersburg, Pennsylvania STUDIO FURNITURE Library of Congress The Smithsonian American Art Museum is of the Renwick Gallery Cataloging-in-Publication Data home to one of the largest collections of Smithsonian American Art Museum American art in the world. Its holdings—more Fitzgerald, Oscar P. than 41,000 works—tell the story of America by Oscar P. Fitzgerald Studio Furniture of the Renwick Gallery, through the visual arts and represent the most Foreword by Paul Greenhalgh Smithsonian American Art Museum / Oscar P. inclusive collection of American art in any Fitzgerald; foreword by Paul Greenhalgh. museum today. It is the nation’s first federal art Project Manager: Theresa Slowik p. cm. collection, predating the 1846 founding of the Editor: Tiffany D. Farrell Includes bibliographical references. Smithsonian Institution. The museum celebrates Designer: Karen Siatras the exceptional creativity of the nation’s artists Researcher: Charlene Johnson ISBN 978-1-56523-365-2 (hardcover) whose insights into history, society, and the Proofreaders: M. Theresa Blackinton, ISBN 978-1-56523-367-6 (pbk.) individual reveal the essence of the American Susan L. Efi rd experience. 1. Studio furniture — United States — History — 20th century — Catalogs. The Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian Cover: Michael Hurwitz, Rocking Chaise, 2. Furniture — Washington (D.C.) — Catalogs. American Art Museum is dedicated to exhibiting 1989, Gift of Anne and Ronald Abramson, 3. Renwick Gallery — Catalogs. I. Smithsonian American crafts and decorative arts from the the James Renwick Alliance, and museum American Art Museum. II. Title. nineteenth through the twenty-first centuries. purchase made possible by the Smithsonian Institution Collections Acquisition Program NK2408.F62 2007 (see pages 104 – 5) 749.0973'074753—dc22 Frontispiece: Albert Paley, Lectern (detail), 2007031007 1990, Gift of Peter T. Joseph (see page 151) For more information or a catalogue of publications, write: Text and images copyright 2007 Printed and bound in China Smithsonian American Art Museum Office of Publications Smithsonian American Art Museum Published in 2008 by Fox Chapel Publishing in MRC 970, PO Box 37012 association with the Smithsonian American Art Washington, DC 20013-7012 Museum. All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval Visit the museum’s Web site at system, or transmitted in any form or by any AmericanArt.si.edu means, mechanical, electronic, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission of the publisher. 1970 Broad Street East Petersburg, PA 17520 www.FoxChapelPublishing.com Contents 7 Foreword Paul Greenhalgh 10 Acknowledgments 13 Building the Collection 31 The Collection 205 A Statistical Snapshot of the Collection 217 Bibliography Foreword FURNITURE IS THE MOST OVERTLY FUNCTIONAL AND century. The loss was at least in part due to one physical of all the arts. It keeps our bodies off the of the most dominant philosophical positions on ground; it supports our repose; it provides our the production of modernist furniture, which work surfaces; it stores and protects the stuff we insisted on focusing not on furniture as art, as a eat and wear; and it protects and contains those vehicle for individual and cultural expression, but precious things with which we choose to surround on furniture as purely mechanical, as equipment ourselves. It is core to our material existence. for use in the domestic and work environments. But it is so much more. Furniture always has Indeed, the whole world of ornamentation and been a principal vehicle of human expression, from decoration—as art—came under challenge in this the earliest examples that have survived through period, and as such, furniture came under pres- the millennia up to the present. It has been a sure to simplify its role in our culture. cultural signifier of prime importance, giving us It is in this regard that the role of the modern indications as to the nature of the lives of those crafts has been vital. From the later nineteenth who made and used it. To look at ancient Egyptian century, generation after generation of modern or Chinese, eighteenth-century English, or craftspeople struggled, against the functionalist nineteenth-century American Shaker furniture is trend, to maintain the possibility that furniture to be presented with an essay on the social and could be a medium for individual expression, as spiritual mores of those peoples. It is an indicator well as the conduit through which the history of of civilization. furniture, and the people who created it, could Furniture is perhaps more allied to architec- be continually revisited. From the arts and crafts ture than any of the other individual craft-based movement and the masters of art nouveau and the arts. It renders architecture useful in its normative secession, through to the masters of the studio functions, and it humanizes it. Some of the greatest crafts movements of the later twentieth century, furniture was designed by architects. Indeed, furniture has continued to serve as a medium for the reverse also is true. Robert Adam and Gerrit intellectual and emotional expression and as a Rietveld, for example, provided the eighteenth vehicle for cultural memory. and twentieth centuries respectively with seminal I would say that after phenomenal develop- furnishings and buildings. ment through the first half of the twentieth Apart from the heritage tying it to architecture, century, by 1970, America had become a dominant furniture has always been, and is, a freestanding nation across much of craft practice. American art. And as such, it would in some senses be fair ceramics and glass artists, for example, were abso- to say that as an art, it lost ground in the twentieth lutely core to the efflorescence of those practices Stephen Courtney, Secretarial Desk (detail); see page 71. into a sculptural, expressive, and dramatic new U.S. Court of Claims, the historic building that tradition. American jewelers took full part in the is now the Renwick Gallery lay vacant until First dramatic evolution that saw jewelry become a Lady Jacqueline Kennedy advocated a viable conceptually driven discourse. And fiber artists program and purpose for it. The government pushed textile art into wholly new realms. then transferred the building to the Smithsonian The furniture world was, on the whole, less Institution. cohesive and dramatic than these other genres When the Renwick Gallery was formed in and unfolded in a more subtle and complex way. 1972, it had no mandate to build a collection. It never had a movement. There is no one cohe- Beginning in the mid-1980s, under the leadership sive school or intellectual thrust in American of National Museum of American Art Director furniture making, but rather, a number of seams Charles Eldredge, the Renwick formed a policy to of activity. Some makers remained broadly loyal collect. From then on, it did so with intelligence to what might be termed the arts-and-crafts tradi- and gusto. tion, at its most powerful in the later nineteenth Studio Furniture is a seminal contribution to and early twentieth century; others effectively furniture literature. It seems to me that above all combined wood carving with furniture to forge a else it does three things. First, it is an absolutely more sculptural practice; some used popular and vital resource for the history of modern American folk imagery to make witty and cryptic comments furniture makers. The biographies and bibliogra- on life; some blended in with mainstream design;