Photograph by Jack Adams, courtesy of the University of New Hampshire Museum of Art.
Daniel Loomis Valenza is professor emeritus at University of New Hampshire, where he taught for forty years. A student of Tage Frid in the 1950s at the School for American Craftsmen at Rochester Institute of Technology, Valenza’s mid century tableware in wood reflects his teacher’s conservative Danish woodworking principles with an eye toward retail production. His elegant and modern chair designs of the 1960s share a stylistic affinity with another unsung New Hampshirite, Walker Weed. By the time of Objects: USA, Valenza’s forms became increasingly biomorphic and playful. The cabinet in the Objects: USA 2020 catalogue is from a series of what he called “happy work,” which includes Piggy II, the jewelry chest exhibited in Objects: USA and now part of the SC Johnson, Council House Collection.
In his artist statement for the catalog, Valenza wrote, “It still amuses me to see people fondle the little animal, feel its appendages and haunches, and wonder at the suck and whoosh of the vacuum and compression in the workings of the little beast.” His later furniture designs mirrored trends in modern art history, as he explored Pop and Minimalism and moved away from traditional forms. In Rita Reif’s review in the New York Times of New Handmade Furniture at the American Craft Museum in 1979, she wryly refers to “the bolted stack of planks that Daniel Loomis Valenza calls a table.”¹
¹ Rita Reif, “The Art of the Furniture Maker,” The New York Times, May 3, 1979, Section C, 1.
Two-Handled Candy Dish in walnut. Designed and made by Daniel Loomis Valenza, USA, 1969.
7.5” L x 16” W x 6” H
19.1cm L x 40.6cm W x 15.2cm H
SM8101
Tabletop liquor cabinet in wood. Designed and made by Daniel Loomis Valenza, 1969. USA.
18" L x 9.5" W x 22" H
45.7cm L x 24.1cm W x 55.9cm H
SU636