Studio Furniture of the Renwick Gallery

akind Ghost Clock sculpture by Wendell Castle to the limited production stool by David Ebner, the collection highlights the astonishing variety of the American studio furniture movement. In this catalogue, author Oscar P. Fitzgerald documents each piece of furniture in a descriptive, illustrated entry. He also recounts the history of the collection's formation in an introductory essay, which illuminates the rationale and aesthetic choices of each curator and notes various donors and support organizations. Finally, Fitzgerald's statistical analysis of the collection, formulated from detailed interviews with the surviving artists, casts new light on workshop practices,marketing concerns and other aspects of the contemporary studio furniture movement. A foreword by noted scholar and curator Paul Greenhalgh gives readers a brilliant overview of the studio furniture field and the intimate role furniture plays in daily life.

akind Ghost Clock sculpture by Wendell Castle to the limited production stool by David Ebner, the collection highlights the astonishing variety of the American studio furniture movement. In this catalogue, author Oscar P. Fitzgerald documents each piece of furniture in a descriptive, illustrated entry. He also recounts the history of the collection's formation in an introductory essay, which illuminates the rationale and aesthetic choices of each curator and notes various donors and support organizations. Finally, Fitzgerald's statistical analysis of the collection, formulated from detailed interviews with the surviving artists, casts new light on workshop practices,marketing concerns and other aspects of the contemporary studio furniture movement. A foreword by noted scholar and curator Paul Greenhalgh gives readers a brilliant overview of the studio furniture field and the intimate role furniture plays in daily life.

division undergraduates through professional/practitioners; general readers.

color image and a brief accompanying artist biography. In all, this is a can't miss text for any collector of American studio furniture. See the original review here.

cover that so beautifully illustrates such an important movement in modern craft.

format soft cover, Oscar Fitzgerald does an admirable job of describing each maker's importance to the movement, but the book is only as good as the collection itself, and time and again, I found a maker's signature pieces missing. Garry Knox Bennett, John Dunnigan, Wharton Esherick, Michael Hurwitz, Kristina Madsen, Jere Osgood, the names are right but the pieces weren't. The curators had better luck with some than others. Wendell Castle and Sam Maloof got full justice. And I was exposed to wonderful pieces and makers I had never seen before. On the other hand, recent artists were included whose work is, frankly, mediocre. I saw a blasé version of a Windsor chair, a bad knockoff of a Maloof rocker, and a mediocre children's chair by someone who was briefly a student and apprentice and then left the field. And some true heavyweights were left out: David Lamb and Terry Moore, with their unmistakably contemporary but always sure handed takes on period furniture; Brian Newell and Michael Puryear, who do the same thing with Asian and African motifs, respectively. Check past back covers of Fine Woodworking for others. I came away thinking that the way to do a definitive book on the studio furniture movement is not to base it on one exhibit, even one at the nation's greatest museum. Why be at the mercy of a curator's whimsy and the realities of collection when all you need are photos of the pieces, not the pieces themselves? I'll forward that thought to our books department here at the Taunton Press. Maybe they'll take up the mantle.

as well as many lesser known makers. If you read this book one hundred years from now, i'm sure it would be as thought provoking as it is today. These are 84 great pieces, and this is one great book.

clocks, chairs, stools, tables, benches, chests, music stands, and other pieces by artists such as Tage Frid, Rob Womack, Wendell Castle, and David Ebner. Fitzgerald, a furniture historian, decorative arts consultant, and teacher with the Smithsonian Institution, describes each piece, which is shown in a color photo, and provides a history and statistical analysis of the collection. The latter is based on interviews with the surviving artists and details workshop practices, marketing concerns, aesthetic influences, design approaches, and other aspects of the contemporary studio furniture movement. (Annotation 2009 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)