The modern craft furniture renaissance is a largely American phenomenon dating from the late 1940’s. It blended both homegrown and foreign influences. Wharton Esherick and George Nakashima, both based in the Philadelphia area, were at the core of this movement. And yet both, while embracing a preference for organic forms (Nakashima going as far as to incorporate the natural edge and defects of the tree trunk into his table tops), also refllected foreign influences.
Look just below a George Nakashima table and you see a base clearly in tune with the aesthetics of Japanese architecture. The elements are spare and the joinery exposed. Esherick’s work, which also embraces organic forms, is knottier and more angular. It is hard to look at his cabinetry and not think of the work, in various media, of the German expressionists of the 1920’s and 30’s.
Another input on the foreign side of the ledger is the influence of the Danish furniture maker and teacher, Tage Frid. Frid came to this country and got teaching positions at Rochester Institute of Technology and Rhode Island School of Design where he taught a whole generation of craft furniture makers, many of whom went on to be teachers themselves.
While Frid tried to convey the simplicity and economy of Scandinavian design (as well as sound craftsmanship), his pupils went off in several directions which weighted the influence tally firmly back in the domestic column.
Hank Gilpin, Jere Osgood, Alphonse Mattia, William Keyser, John Dunnigan, and Rosanne Somerson sent American Craft Furniture in new directions. Sam Maloof, James Krenov, Art Carpenter, Gary Knox Bennett, Wendy Maruyama,Wendell Castle and many others while not pupils of Frid’s, also played key roles in this transformation.
The preference for organic, natural forms embodied in Nakashima and Esherick’s work remained a strong force – one which saw a further elaboration in the stack laminated sculptural pieces of Dan Jackson and Wendell Castle. But Frid’s students helped take studio furniture in three new and related directions. These crafts people settled into what I like to call the three P’s – paraphrase, parody, and primitivism. Those who paraphrased took established forms and gave them modern re-interpretations – basing work on various styles such as Chippendale, Federal, Biedemeier, Art Deco, Shaker etc. The parodists, usually introduced humor into the mix. An example would be Ed Zucca’s “Shaker Television”, a chest incorporating many elements of Shaker design into a cabinet made to resemble a TV. Primitivist works tend to resemble the crafts of some unknown tribe, evoking the power of the spirit world by mimicking animal-like forms and coloration. Judy McKie and Wendy Murayama were the queens of this realm.
Of course, many furniture artists aren’t neatly pigeonholed into one of these categories and individual works sometimes contain elements from more than one category, but the influence of these trends is still clear and carries with it an important question. Paraphrase, parody, and primitivism all carry with them a heavy burden of the past. All of them achieve their power by using successful, known, forms as primary points of reference. The life blood of this work is its commentary on the past. The question is, could furniture artisans develop a more powerful vocabulary of form by embracing the technology, materials and social reality of the present?
I have to say this is a very interesting post.