Virtuosic American Woodwork
Present in both OBJECTS: USA and OBJECTS: USA 2020, Wharton Esherick, George Nakashima, Wendell Castle, Daniel Loomis Valenza, and Sam Maloof epitomize 20th-century virtuosic woodworking in America. Their contributions began reshaping the field as far back as the 1930s, and are still relevant today. Exhibition co-curator James Zemaitis shares some historical insight into each of these artists' works to both the 1969 and our current show.
Honored by the curators of OBJECTS: USA as "The undisputed dean of American woodworkers," Wharton Esherick (1887–1970) was nearing the end of his life when the exhibition opened in 1969. His earliest chair designs from the 1930s are iconic forms of American modernism. This "Hammer-Handle" chair is the fourth and final version made for the Hedgerow Theatre in Rose Valley, PA in 1938. Constructed with two sizes of re-purposed hickory hammer handles, it epitomizes the ethos of Depression-era artistic expression.
George Nakashima (1905–1990) was represented in OBJECTS: USA with a Conoid Bench which is nearly identical to the present example. The artistic pinnacle of Nakashima's seating designs, each Conoid Bench is made unique by the size and shape of the American walnut plank. Nakashima frequently wrote about the "soul of the tree," stressing the artistic merits of each board's fissures and decompositions. Here he calls attention to the natural decay with a decorative but stabilizing rosewood butterfly key. The crest rail and spindles are inspired by both Chinese imperial furniture of the 16th Century and American Windsor benches of the 19th Century.
Wendell Castle (1932–2018) contributed several masterworks of laminated sculptural furniture to OBJECTS: USA which epitomized the exhibition's emphasis on craft's embrace of modern art, including a table and stool (now in the collection of The Museum of Arts and Design, New York) which was based on the present table, made in 1967. In Castle's artist statement for “Objects: USA,” he noted that "the organic form offers the most exciting possibilities—it can never be completely understood in one glance." Our "Serpent" table was first shown in Castle's exhibition at Lee Nordness's gallery in 1968, and later in the legendary "Woodenworks" exhibition at the Renwick Gallery, Smithsonian American Art Museum, in 1972.
This liquor cabinet by Daniel Loomis Valenza (born 1934) is from the same series of tabletop objects as the jewelry chest exhibited in OBJECTS: USA. Valenza's woodworks are only now being rediscovered fifty years later—he is currently receiving his first-ever career retrospective at the University of New Hampshire Museum of Art. Valenza's playful, zoomorphic forms from the late 1960s are inspired by Wendell Castle, who was one of his MFA teachers at RIT earlier in the decade.
"I am a furniture designer and woodworker, perhaps in the traditional manner, where craftsmanship and joinery are of prime importance," wrote Sam Maloof (1916–2009) in his statement for OBJECTS: USA. Although Maloof had been making rocking chairs since the late 1950s, his most elaborate and masterful version was first realized in 1975 for the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and the model is often referred to as the "Boston Rocker." Our example shown here dates to 1976 and illustrates the sweeping majesty of the elongated final refinement of the traditional form, which was achieved by laminating seven layers of wood to form the rockers. It was this version that would be gifted to Ronald Reagan in 1981 and enter the White House Collection as the first piece of American studio furniture.