13 Photos
This portrait of Joyce Anderson with her carving tools accompanied a 1956 New York Times profile of the Andersons. A piano bench created for the Andersons’ friends and patrons Sandra and Louis Grotta, contemporary crafts collectors in Harding Township, New Jersey. Architect Richard Meier designed the Grottas’ home. The couple filled it with custom pieces by the Andersons, including a ten-foot-long wall-hung walnut cabinet (top) and a coffee table (below). The Grotta collection also includes works by ceramicists Rudy Autio, Ken Ferguson and Wayne Higby; the textile artist Françoise Grossen; and the woodturner Bob Stocksdale. © Tom Grotta
This Paul Evan's Cabinet from 1977 brought $382,000.00 at Rago Arts in 2017, the highest price ever paid at auction to date for a Paul Evans work. A special collaboration for a favored client, Evans utilized many of his signature design elements to create this piece which also features a seldom used polished, glossy crimson and gold enamel surface as well as 23 karat gold gilt edges. This cabinet was the subject of a New York Times article prior to the sale speculating that it would exceed its $140,000.00 estimate. COURTESY MODERN AMERICANA
Lenny Kravitz’s Paris home as featured in Architectural Digest, France, October 2010. Kravitz purchased the 12-foot-long Paul Evans Sculpted Bronze Console from Todd Merrill in 2008 and placed it at the top of a limestone staircase. COURTESY MODERN AMERICANA
A still from the 2014 documentary film “Paul Evans: From High Craft to High Glam” produced and directed by Lauren Merrill for the Michener Art Museum and the Cranbrook Art Museum exhibitions of Paul Evans’ work. The documentary is outstanding for bringing together many of the friends, colleagues and family members who made up the Paul Evans Studio from 1955 to 1987, letting each tell their story in their own words portraying the dramatic rise and fall of this American design icon. / Andy Warhol at the April 10, 1973 opening of a new display of Italian themed model rooms at Bloomingdales’ Lexington Avenue, New York City flagship. Bloomingdales would host lavish events attended by New York society and celebrities to celebrate their model room displays which changed twice annually. COURTESY MODERN AMERICANA
Mackenzie Kim earlier this season at the Seboack Invitational. RON ESPOSITO
Wendy Maruyama in 1987, when she was head of the Woodworking and Furniture Design Program at California College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland. Homage to Jimmy Carter, 1991, a small cabinet with a peanut-shaped handle stands on leaf-shaped legs in red, variegated green and black. Mixing the iconography of influential historic furniture and California pop, Maruyama’s Mickey Mackintosh Chair, 1988, is made of maple spattered in Zolatone paint. Courtesy of Yale University Art Gallery, Friends of American Arts Acquisition Fund. Autosave-File vom d-lab2/3 der AgfaPhoto GmbH
Since the 1970s, Rosanne Somerson has maintained her own design studio in the Boston area, where she creates furniture for exhibition and by commission. , Tall Back Chairs, 1990. From the beginning of her career, Somerson has sought to challenge herself by working with complex mixes of materials. These chairs are made from blistered poplar, holly, bronze, and silk upholstery. COURTESY MODERN AMERICANA
This rocking chair, designed by Vladimir Kagan in the 1950s and in production through the 1980s, is upholstered in wool embroidery designed by his wife, Erica Wilson. She started using owl motifs in the early 1960s. Kagan and Wilson, who collaborated throughout their five-decade marriage. COURTESY MODERN AMERICANA
Eve Kahn, Kristina Madsen, Mira Nakashima, Dallas Dunn, Michael Coffey, Todd Merrill at Rizzoli Bookstore in New York City. COURTESY TODD MERRILL STUDIO
Eve Kahn, Kristina Madsen, Mira Nakashima, Dallas Dunn, Michael Coffey, Todd Merrill at Rizzoli Bookstore in New York City. COURTESY TODD MERRILL STUDIO
Todd Merrill signing the second edition of Modern Americana. COURTESY TODD MERRILL STUDIO
Epitomizing the glamorous revival of late 20th Century American design, Todd Merrill assembled this vignette of pieces circa 1950s to 1970s for a 2006 Elle Decor advert. Merrill set the stage with chocolate brown lacquered walls and high gloss ebonized floors inspired by legendary decorator Mark Hampton. Layered against this backdrop is Tommi Parzinger's signature piece, a marigold yellow console and mirror with a pair of resin pagoda sculptures by Tony Duquette and a gilded Buddha by James Mont. The chairs are by Billy Haines, stripped of their quilted floral chintz and reupholstered in silk velvet inspired by Bill Blass, all sitting on a pair of zebra rugs once owned by couturier Geoffrey Beene. COURTESY MODERN AMERICANA
Inside the pages of Modern Americana: Judy Kensley McKie’s Monkey Settee, 1995, is made of walnut and bronze and belongs to the Renwick Gallery at the Smithsonian American Art Museum. Its zoological imagery is characteristic of McKie’s furniture. Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of the James Renwick Alliance in honor of Michael W. Monroe, Renwick Gallery Curator-in-Charge, 1986-1995 © 1995 Judy Kensley McKie
In 2008, a hardcover book gained notoriety for showing a history of 20th century limited-edition furniture and emphasizing American studio design post-World War II to the 1990s.Todd Merrill’s “Modern Americana: Studio Furniture From High Craft to High Glam” was published by Rizzoli International Publications, claiming to offer the first authoritative collection of profiles on great studio furniture makers and designers that defined modern American high style.
But it was an incomplete history, Mr. Merrill noted, void of the role showrooms and female designers had on custom furniture in the United States before the turn of the 21st century.
Last month, Rizzoli Bookstore in Manhattan held a book signing with Mr. Merrill and Eve Kahn, a renowned antiquities writer, to talk about the 10th anniversary expanded edition of “Modern Americana” released in October. The new edition has two new chapters and revises the original chapters to include more about one of the most collectible periods of design. Influential designers featured in the book, including Michael Coffey, Kristina Madsen and Mira Nakashima, were in attendance.
“What could be bad?” laughed Mr. Merrill days later, while he was packing his bags in his Southampton home. The art furniture dealer has a studio on Main Street. He was heading to the airport for a short book tour.
“The last of the great studio artists were in attendance,” he continued.
Todd Merrill: There are 60 new pages. Nearly 100 new photographs. It has been substantially updated chapter by chapter.
The original book was really created based on the secondary market. Artists had been revived, because people started collecting their work in the early 2000s. Their work was bringing very high prices at auction for [George] Nakashima, Paul Evans, Phil Powell, Vladimir Kagan and Wendell Castle.
But to my surprise, there is really no information on these people. That is, aside from people like Nakashima who had books done on their shops. But out of the 27 artists that were profiled in the first book, I think that only three of them had anything that was really done on them. Plus, a lot of them were deceased. I think only six at the time were living. And some of these people like Karl Springer, for example, had the most expensive furniture in America for 20 years. People were spending huge amounts of money on him, but they didn’t even know who the artist was.
The impetus for the book was the market.
The women didn’t start making until 1970. They really started coming about because of academic programs that catered to women that had workshops. Women weren’t even in workshops really before 1970, unless it was family-based like Mira and George Nakashima.
By the ’80s, women were shown actively in galleries and had real business. And at the time I wrote the book, they were not in the secondary market yet. They were still primary market with many of their original galleries.
Flash forward to 2016, we started to look at the book again, and what was missing—the women were missing.
We did a very large, 35-page chapter.
Mira Nakashima, Kristina Madsen, Wendy Mariuma and Rosanne Somerson, who is now the president of Rhode Island School of Design, as well as about 80 other names were profiled or mentioned in the chapter.
It was this whole era in America—in Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, big cities—where people who go shopping at Bloomingdale’s, B. Altman, Lord & Taylor, Directional Furniture, Singer & Sons and Grosfeld House.
These were huge names. People would go on the weekends and change their interiors six times a year. Macy’s turned over literally every month. They were supporting a lot of the artists that were in the book by having sort of contract lines with them. The artist would sell out of their studio work, but then like Vladimir Kagan would do stuff for Directional Furniture and Bloomingdale’s.
There was a difference in the market for furniture you would get in department stores versus what you could get in the studio. Marketwise, if you were a new collector, a Nakashima studio headboard would go for $25,000. But a Nakashima headboard produced—still at very high standards—for Witcomb, which was sold through Bloomingdale’s, would probably be $2,000. People don’t understand the difference.
In the late 1980s, Williams Sonoma came on the scene with cheap, good-taste furniture, and there were a lot of financial mistakes made by some of the executives at the big department stores. Within four years, it was Pottery Barn, Crate & Barrel, Williams Sonoma and Ralph Lauren.
That whole era of specialty showrooms disappeared.
We have another book planned for before 2020.
This would be a different type of book that covered a different area for us. It’s more on the living artists that we, under Todd Merrill Studio, represent now. We want to look at what’s going on in the 21st century.
It will not be a “Modern Americana” book. This would be more contemporary.
JD Allen on Dec 17, 2018