Related Products

• 

  Details

  Christopher Dresser / Heath & Middleton Petite claret jug 1887

  CHRISTOPHER DRESSER (1834-1904) UK

  HEATH & MIDDLETON   Birmingham, England

  Petite claret jug   1887

  Sterling silver mounts with hinged covers to both top and spout, glass, ebony handle

  Marks: JTH & JHM in a four-lobed cartouche, London assay marks for 1887 (“M” in a shield), Vienna import mark (conjoined AV in a 6-sided cartouche)

  Illustrated: Industrial Design Unikate Serienerzeugnisse, Die Neue Sammlung ein neuer Museumstyp des 20. Jahrhunderts, Hans Wichmann (Munich: Prestel-Verlag, 1985), p. 131; Christopher Dresser, ein Viktorianischer Designer, 1834-1904 (Cologne: Kunstgewerbemuseum der Stadt Köln, 1981), p. 73, ill. 86, cat. no. 23; Industrial Design, John Heskett (New York and Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1980), p. 24, illus. 9; Christopher Dresser 1834-1904, Michael Collins (London: Camden Arts Centre, 1979), p. 171, cat.no.12.

  H: 6” x Dia: 4”

   

• 

  Details

  Sori Yanagi / Tendo Co. Ltd. / Japanese Crafts “Butterfly” Stool c.1956

  Sori Yanagi (1915-2012), Japan
  Tendo Co. Ltd., Japan

  Butterfly stool, 1956.

  Bleached rosewood veneer on plywood with brass.

  H: 15” x W: 16 ½” x D: 12”

  Price: $4,900

  This model can be found in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art and the Metropolitan Museum in New York.

  The Japanese designer Sori Yanagi is best known for his 1956 Butterfly Stool. It is both elegant and utterly simple: two curved pieces of molded plywood are held together through compression and tension by a single brass rod. The stool’s graceful shape recalls a butterfly’s wings, and has also been compared to the form of torii, the traditional Shinto shrine gates. He loved traditional Japanese crafts and was dedicated to the modernist principles of simplicity, practicality and tactility that are associated with Alvar Aalto, Charles and Ray Eames, and Le Corbusier.”

  Yanagi, who studied architecture and art at Tokyo’s Academy of Fine Art, was inspired by the work of Le Corbusier and by the designer Charlotte Perriand, with whom he worked in the early 1940s, while she was in Tokyo as the arts and crafts adviser to the Japanese Board of Trade. But perhaps the most indelible influence on Yanagi was that of his father, Soetsu Yanagi, who led the “mingei” movement, which celebrated Japanese folk craft and the beauty of everyday objects, and who founded the Nihon Mingeikan (or Japanese Folk Crafts Museum) in Tokyo. Yanagi fils, who was named director of the museum in 1977, succinctly described his design aesthetic in a 2002 interview in The Japan Times: “I try to create things that we human beings feel are useful in our daily lives. During the process, beauty is born naturally.” Throughout his life, Sori Yanagi was inspired by what he called “anonymous design” — he cited the Jeep and a baseball glove as two examples — and he in turn inspired younger designers, like Naoto Fukasawa, Tom Dixon and Jasper Morrison.

• 

  Details

  Andrea Branzi “Cucus” chair c. 1985

  Andrea Branzi (1938 – )   Zabro, Italy.

  “Cucus” chair c.1985

  Lacquered wood, tree branches

  Illustrated: Domestic Animals: The Neoprimative Style Andrea and Nicoletta Branzi, (London, 1987) n.p.; Designed by Architects in the 1980s, Julie Capella and Quim Larrea, Barcelona, 1987, p. 37; Anne Bony, Paris Les années 80, 1995, p. 520; Charlotte and Peter Fiell, 1000 Chairs, Cologne, 2000, p. 588

  H: 42 3/4″ x W: 19 3/4″ x D: 24″

  Price: $19,000

  The  “Cucus” chair was part of  the “Domestic Animals” series
  designed in 1985/86 by Andrea Branzi for Zabro.

  Andrea Branzi's “Domestic Animals” series was designed in 1985 and 1986 for the Italian firm Zabro. Designs were later also manufactured by Zanotta. Andrea Branzi created “Domestic Animals” in collaboration with Nicoletta Branzi, who produced limited edition art clothing for this series. The “Neoprimitive” style in which this collection has been rendered utilizes natural materials such as sticks to create an object that brings archetypal symbols into the home to produce emotional effects. These objects combine technology and nature and the symbols and codes that these entail demonstrating that “a hybrid love between different creatures is possible.” (Branzi, Domestic Animals, 1987, n.p.) With these objects Branzi aims to “domesticate” technological inventions so as to make them a positive presence in man's life.
  “The difference between a domestic animal and a trained (or tamed) one lies in the fact that the latter is the outcome of an unnatural and violent attitude, while the domestic animal establishes the dream of a loving relationship with man.” (Branzi, Domestic Animals, 1987, n.p.)

  Andrea Branzi, architect and designer, born in Florence in 1938, where he graduated in 1967, lives and works in Milano. From 1964 to 1974 he was a partner of Archizoom Associati, first vanguard group internationally known, whose projects are preserved at Centro Studi e Archivio della Comunicazione in Parma and at Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris.
  Since 1967 he works in the fields of industrial and research design, architecture, urban planning, education and cultural promotion.He is Professor at the Third Faculty of Architecture and Industrial Design of Politecnico di Milano.

• 

  Details

  Nigel Coates, Rare, Early and Iconic Genie stool 1988

  NIGEL COATES  (b. 1949)  England
  BRANSON COATES ARCHITECTURE  London

  “Genie” stool  1988

  Carved and sandblasted solid ash seat on twisted mild steel legs

  Marks: NIGEL COATES  GENIE STOOL
  Illustrated: 1000 chairs, Charlotte & Peter Fiell (Cologne: Taschen Verlag, 1997), p. 615.

  H: 26: x D: 13 1/2″

  Price: $9,500

   

  British architect and designer. He studied at Nottingham University and the Architectural Association, London, where he graduated in 1974 and subsequently taught until 1989. In 1983 he formed the group NATO (Narrative Architecture Today) with a group of former students and began to practice independently; two years later he went into partnership with Doug Branson (b 1951). Coates became known for his fluid and lively graphic style and the overt theatricality of his designs. His proposals for the redevelopment of London, involving sophisticated allegories of popular culture, were shown in two exhibitions: ArkAlbion (1984), with drawings of new development areas such as County Hall and the Isle of Dogs, and Ecstacity (1992), with computer simulations and video clips. In the renovation (1980) of his own flat in London he juxtaposed the original, ornate late 19th-century interior with ‘found’ furniture and decorative objects. The publication of this project brought Coates to the attention of Japanese clients who were seeking fashionable Western designers, and he carried out several projects in Japan that became increasingly theatrical: in Tokyo the Metropole Restaurant (1985) evokes a European café, while the Parco Café Bongo (1986) juxtaposes classical English furniture with an imitation aeroplane wing mounted on the ceiling; and the Arca di Noè (1988), Sapporo, is an eclectic mixture of classical motifs and a concrete boat. Coates’s radical approach was dissipated in later British works, such as a series of London shops: one for Katharine Hamnett in Sloane Street (1988) has a shop front formed of aquaria, and one for Jigsaw in Knightsbridge (1992) has its shop front formed of a two-storey copper column in the shape of a phallus. In 1992 he began designing an extension to the Geffrye Museum, London.
  Coates was an influential teacher at the Architectural Association from 78- 86, and has lectured extensively abroad. In 1995 he was appointed Professor of Architectural Design at the Royal College of Art and now divides his time equally between the college and his office. Nigel Coates furniture is represented in the Modern Furniture Collection of the Victoria & Albert Museum, London.

  “I go for architecture that overlays and enhances. By blending observation and wit with reason, I want my work to generate a sense of the unexpected, and the seemingly spontaneous.”