Studio Furniture at the Renwick

Furniture historian Oscar Fitzgerald discusses his new catalog of contemporary artisan-made furniture at the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s Renwick Gallery.

1. George Nakashima “Conoid Bench”
1977 Walnut, hickory, 31-1/8″ × 84-1/2″ × 35-5/8″
Photo by Edward Owen

Tom Caspar: You’ve been writing about woodworking in the United States for quite a while, including the comprehensive book Four Centuries of American Furniture. How did you become acquainted with the Renwick’s collection?

Oscar Fitzgerald: I live across the Potomac from Washington, D. C., and the Renwick has been a favorite place to visit ever since it opened in the early 1970s. Compared to most of the other Smithsonian museums, it has a nice, cozy feel. You can actually take everything in on a single visit. The Renwick’s studio furniture collection is amazing–86 pieces and growing, one of the largest collections in the country.

TC: I understand that the Smithsonian didn’t expressly set out to assemble a representative group of modern studio furniture. How did their collection get started?

OF: When the Renwick building became vacant after the Court of Claims moved out in the late 1960s, the government was trying to figure out what to do with it. Lloyd Herman, who worked at the Smithsonian, wrote a letter suggesting that it be turned into a gallery for traveling exhibits focusing on design. Dillon Ripley, then the head of the Smithsonian, broadened the idea to include arts and crafts as well as design and it was finally accepted. Lloyd became the first director. The museum did not intend to have a permanent collection, but people kept trying to donate stuff so finally they started accepting craft objects. The rest is history.

TC: Many furnituremakers I know began their careers in the 60’s and 70’s, influenced by a number of earlier pioneers. You’ve called this vanguard “the first generation.” How is this period covered at the Renwick?

OF: The Renwick is fortunate to have a strong body of work by this first generation, including Wharton Esherick, the patriarch of the field, Tage Frid, who taught a whole generation of makers, and George Nakashima, whose work recently has gone through the ceiling on the auction market. Nakashima’s work epitomizes the philosophy of this group–an almost mystical feeling for wood. His Conoid Bench (1) features the free edge that is typical of his work. It looks simple, but think of all the decisions that went into cutting that board for the seat: length, thickness, width, angles, etc. When you see Nakashima wannabes that just don’t get it, you realize how sophisticated his work really is.

TC: You’ve identified a number of later builders as interpreters of the first generation. What do you mean by that?

OF: The reverence for wood and technical skills of these first-generation artisans still resonates with many makers. You can see both of these concerns expressed in David Ebner’s Stool (2). He chose beautifully figured walnut and put it together with finely-cut dovetails. It’s all about wood and joinery. He’s definitely carrying on this noble tradition. Many still agree with Art Carpenter’s assessment that furniture should be about fine woods and fine craftsmanship. Everything else he termed “Artiture.”

TC: Studio furniture isn’t entirely free from historical styles. Some builders have adapted traditional designs, haven’t they?

OF: There’s a whole group of cabinetmakers that like to make reproductions of historical styles and the Renwick has one or two examples in the collection. Other makers start with historical designs and update them. Take the work of Timothy Philbrick–he started out restoring antiques and then went through the Program in Artisanry at Boston University, where he came under the influence of John Kirk, an expert in the antique-furniture world. Philbrick’s Curly Cherry Cellaret (3) is loosely based on a design from Thomas Sheraton, but it has bits and pieces of other styles, like the legs, which are found on Emile-Jacques Ruhlmann’s work in 1920s France.

TC: Some of the pieces at the Renwick seem to tell a story or comment on our culture.

OF: I interviewed all of the makers represented in the collection, except, of course, the dead ones, and most of them told me that they avoid political or social commentary because they want their pieces to make a positive impression. But some of them do include personal biography in their work. This is true of Tommy Simpson, whose G. W. Cabinet recalls a childhood play he was in when his pants ripped. Kim Schmahmann takes a more cosmic view with Bureau of Bureaucracy (4), his take on Western Culture and his place in it. The series of flat drawers in the front hold all his important papers like his birth certificate, immigration papers and even his death certificate not yet filled in. One alcove reproduces the reading room of the Library of Congress, which he sees as symbolizing the repository of Western knowledge. Another series of drawers addresses issues in the workplace, like a glass door, top drawer, back door, etc. The bureau took him five years to complete, which I guess is not too long for a piece that purports to be a summary of all of Western culture.

TC: Although wood is the primary material used in the Renwick’s collection, studio furniture has certainly embraced metal and textiles as well. Why do you think wood has retained its status?

OF: Wood is the traditional material for furniture and it is what we expect. It can be fashioned into almost any shape. It is warm and inviting to the touch and the grain pattern can be dazzling. Metal, on the other hand, is everything wood is not–cold, hard and foreboding. And that is just the reason for its attraction. I think it’s the shock value. Jim Rose made No. 56 Seven-Drawer Counter, a reproduction of a Shaker cabinet, in cold, hard steel. For Lectern, Albert Paley shaped the metal in seemingly impossible ways. When Garry Knox Bennett was asked to make a contemporary rendering of an 18th-century antique from the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston for an exhibit they sponsored in 1989, he made Boston Kneehole (5) out of alternate materials, including brick, aluminum and plastic laminate. It definitely achieves the shock value he intended, which is what you would expect from a man trained as a sculptor, not as a furnituremaker.

TC: Natural wood, whether planed smooth or left in the rough, was revered by those first-generation builders. More recent artisans have experimented with color and texture. Is this trend now widely accepted?

OF: Definitely. When Tom Loeser and Wendy Maruyama first started painting wood in the 1970s the first generation of makers were outraged at the desecration of the wood. But now it is accepted practice. For example, Rob Womack, the artist who did All Sound, uses furniture (found furniture–he doesn’t even make it) solely as a canvas. Most cabinetmakers don’t go that far, but they are definitely interested in brightening up brown furniture. John Eric Byers spends many more hours applying up to seven coats of paint to each little square of his furniture, such as his Hat Box Chest (6), than he does on the cabinetry. I also think that as exotic woods from the rain forest have become less PC, cabinetmakers are turning to other techniques like paint to enliven their work.

TC: Although this collection is mostly functional furniture, a number of sculptural pieces are also included. Historically, hasn’t American furniture often crossed this line?

OF: The old art versus craft thing. It really comes down to definitions. Art is supposedly useless and craft is functional. But art does have a use, too, to provide an aesthetic pleasure. Furniture also provides aesthetic pleasure besides being functional. It is interesting to me that more and more artists are turning to furniture as a medium for their message. I think this is because furniture is so familiar and easy to relate to. It’s the perfect medium for trying to convey their ideas. All the furniture in the Renwick provides visual pleasure and most of the pieces are completely functional as furniture. The most glaring exception is Wendell Castle’s Ghost Clock (7), which is all made from Honduran mahogany, including the sheet. It was actually part of a series of functional clocks, but Ghost is not a real clock. It certainly functions as an aesthetic pleasure. I can’t tell you how many times I have stood in the gallery and overheard people complain that the staff had not removed the cover from the clock.

TC: While leafing through your catalog, a number of whimsical pieces just made me smile. We can relate to well-designed furniture in a number of ways, right?

OF: Humor is always good. Every time I see Richard Ford’s Uncle Rick’s Wonderland I get a warm feeling. It affected his three year old niece that way, too, when she gave it the name. When you see Craig Nutt’s fantasies, such as Radish Salad Bowl (8), you can’t help but wonder “What was he thinking?” And I think that’s the point. He wants us to reconsider what furniture is all about. You might say, “What do vegetables have to do with furniture?” When you ask Craig that question, about all he will tell you is that he likes gardening. I’m still trying to figure it out and in the end I think they are just vege-tables.

TC: In addition to stunning, full-page photographs of the collection, Studio Furniture contains a long chapter that’s a gold mine of information. It’s a statistical snapshot based on a questionnaire sent to all the artisans whose work is at the Renwick. What was the purpose of this research?

OF: This essay grew out of a project I did during a Renwick Research Fellowship several years ago. When I first started getting interested in this field, I was overwhelmed to find that there are maybe 20,000 artisans making furniture on one level or another. You can’t talk about 20,000 different people, so the question was, who were the most significant? My son is a chemist and in the science field they determine the importance of research by the number of citations a paper gets. So I had one of my students, Charlene Johnson, count the number of major articles and books on each maker and from that I tabulated a list of the top most-cited makers. I interviewed them to get a snapshot of this group, asking how they were trained, where they worked, what their aesthetic influences were, shop practices, and how they marketed their goods. The essay in the catalogue does the same thing, but it focuses on the artists in the collection. You’ll find a lot of interesting stories in there!

The photos in this article are from STUDIO FURNITURE of the Renwick Gallery, Smithsonian American Art Museum by Oscar P. Fitzgerald. Text and images copyright 2007 by the Smithsonian American Art Museum. STUDIO FURNITURE was published in 2008 by Fox Chapel Publishing. For more information, visit www.FoxChapelPublishing.com.

PHOTO BY GENE YOUNG
2.
David Ebner
“Stool”
1974
Black walnut
16-1/2″ × 15-7/8″ × 14-1/8″

PHOTO BY BRUCE MILLER
3.
Timothy Philbrick
“Curly Cherry Cellaret”
1994
Cherry, satinwood, fossil ivory
54″ × 41-1/2″ × 22″

PHOTO BY BRUCE MILLER
4.
Kim Schmahmann
“Bureau of Bureaucracy”
1993-99
Various hardwoods, veneers,
mother-of-pearl, gold leaf, brass
96″ × 36″ × 24″

PHOTO BY MILDRED BALDWIN
5.
Garry Knox Bennett
“Boston Kneehole”
1989
Honduran rosewood, maple, aluminum, brick, Fountainhead,
ColorCore, antiqued bronze, watercolor
31-1/4″ × 50-11/4″ × 24″

PHOTO BY BRUCE MILLER
6.
John Eric Byers
“Hat Box Chest”
1999
Mahogany, milk paint
72″ × 21″ × 20″

PHOTO BY BRUCE MILLER
7.
Wendell Castle
“Ghost Clock”
1985
Honduran mahogany
86-1/4″ × 24-1/2″ × 15″

PHOTO BY GENE YOUNG
8.
Craig Nutt
“Radish Salad Bowl”
1998
Maple, birch, tupelo
55-5/8″ × 21″ × 21″