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  Thomas Jekyll (attr.) Aesthetic Movement Iron Umbrella or Cane Stand c.1885

  THOMAS JEKYLL (attr.) (1827–1881)
  BRITISH AESTHETIC MOVEMENT

  Umbrella stand  c. 1885

  Black nickelled and patinated cast and wrought iron,
  sunburst detail and decorative fretwork

  H: 25 1/4” x W: 13” x D: 9 1/2”
  Base W: 9 1/2”

  Although he was a successful architect, Jeckyll is best known today for his “epoch-making” designs in metalwork. His architectural practice routinely included the design of gates, railings, and metal fittings for domestic commissions and of coronas, candelabra, and altar rails for ecclesiastical ones. But it was his exhibition pieces for the ironworks firm of Barnard, Bishop & Barnards of Norwich that brought him his greatest renown. His “Norwich Gates” for the 1862 London International Exhibition set in motion the 19th-century wrought iron revival in Great Britain. Subsequent creations, including his “Four Seasons Gates,” exhibited in Paris in 1867 and Vienna in 1873, and his cast iron pavilion for the 1876 Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition, received substantial praise, in particular for their creative use of Asian principles and motifs. His innovative Anglo-Japanese designs for stoves, stove fronts, fenders, fire irons, and other domestic metalwork were also produced and sold in large numbers. As these designs were both artistic and affordable, they allowed the incorporation of objects of beauty into middle-class homes. He was one of the few figures in the design reform movement in Britain who managed to unite beauty and utility.

  A very intricately worked late Victorian or Aesthetic Movement wrought and cast iron tall stand for umbrellas or canes with delicately riveted cross hatch fretwork and curling details and handle motif along with an attached iron base with a sunburst design all in the original black nickel finish.

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  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.