American Art Deco Furniture: ART DECO MAPLE DESK, CHINA CABINET, PAINTED SCREEN, COMMODE, ILLUMINATED BAR.
American Art Deco Furniture: MAPLE DESK, CHINA CABINET, PAINTED SCREEN, COMMODE, ILLUMINATED BAR.
ALTHOUGH THE UNITED STATES did not
participate in the 1925 Paris Exhibition, the Exhibition was still hugely influential there. Many American designers, including Eugene Schoen, visited it, and it was covered by American newspapers and magazines. Also, the following year, a tour of more than 400 objects that had been displayed in Paris was organized by Charles Richards, director of the American Association of Museums. He had been impressed by the Exhibition and hoped to initiate
“a parallel movement” in the United States by mounting the tour.
New York department stores, such as Lord & Taylor and R.H. Macy Company, also helped to publicize the Art Deco style by putting on exhibitions in the late 1920s of Art Deco furniture by leading Parisian designers. Eugene Schoen emulated his French contemporaries by creating pieces in rare and exotic woods, incorporating marquetry and inlays, coloured lacquers, and subtle carvings. His forms were architectural, with
their clean lines and restrained, stylized decoration, and his cabinetmaking was of the highest quality.
A NEW DIRECTION
A parallel Art Deco movement did blossom in the United States, but it developed along different lines to those of Europe. A handful of innovative designers, such as Paul Frankl, K.E.M. Weber, and Josef Urban, who had been born in Europe, combined the French Art Deco style with those of the Bauhaus (see p.386) and the Wiener
Werkstatte in their designs. Instead of producing expensive luxury pieces, they created well-crafted, functional pieces that could be mass produced.
Donald Deskey, the principal interior designer for New York City’s Radio City Music Hall, created dramatic, highly charged furniture. It combined the luxurious elements of French Art Deco with the more functional and rectilinear features of the Bauhaus style, which made full use of the latest technology. Deskey used the rare woods, lacquer, and glass loved by French designers but combined them with modern materials, such as aluminium and Bakelite, to embellish his opulent furniture designs.
American designers welcomed the machine age with open arms. They decorated their furniture with machine motifs, such as interlocking cogs and wheels. They celebrated speed and dynamism with the increasingly streamlined look of their furniture inspired by automobiles, ocean liners, and locomotives, and motifs based on dramatic bolts of lightning. They made bold use of Cubist-inspired geometric shapes and jazzy abstract patterns, arid iucludcd iconic American molds based
on the modern city and way of life, such as the skyscraper.
The industrial designer K.E.M. Weber established a Californian version of Art Deco. His distinctive furniture was mostly made from metal and glass and often had skyscraper-like features. Weber created sleek, functional furniture for private commissions as well as designs intended for mass production, using new materials such as chromed metal, sprung steel, and laminated wood. He also designed lavish Art Deco furniture for dazzling Hollywood film sets, which were largely responsible for transmitting the American Art Deco style to the world.
Eugene Schoen designed this maple desk for Schieg Hungate and Kotzian. The heavy rectangular desktop, with moulded sides, sits on block feet. The supporting table underneath, which has a semi-circular cut-out, carries the desktop section. c.1935
Signed and dated Robert W Charter
1928.
CHINA CABINET
This simple, rectilinear cabinet was designed by Paul Frankl. The limed, slate grey base and case of the lower section provide a striking contrast to the three ivory doors with semi-circular brass pulls. On top of this is is an unadorned china cabinet with a limed ivory finish. The three shelves of the cabinet are enclosed by two sliding glass doors.
MAPLE DESK
PAINTED SCREEN
This dramatic, three-panelled wooden screen by Robert Winthrop Chanter features two zebras locked in combat, painted in black and tan on an ivory background. The back of the screen is decorated with diagonal stripes in black with silver foil, in imitation of a zebra’s stripes.
The screen is signed and dated in the lower right corner. Chanter’s screens were greatly admired, and this example was commissioned by the Broadway composer Kay Swift and her husband. Screens were popular during the Art Deco period and this particular piece is of the utmost luxury, as emphasized by the use of silver foil. 1928.
PAINTED CHAIR
This William L. Price painted chair has moulded legs and an intricately carved backrest. It was designed for the dining room at Traymore Hotel, New Jersey, which was demolished in 1972.
STEEL STOOL
One of a set of four patinated steel stools, this stool has an upholstered, padded seat and a pierced apron cast with scrolling foliage. The stool has turned supports, linked by stretchers, with a maker’s label.
COMMODE
Designed by John Widdicomb for a department store, this commode has a geometrically inlaid top above a single long drawer, with stylized inlay. The twin inlaid and figured panel doors enclose three drawers. H 111.75cm (44in). FRE
ILLUMINATED BAR
Made from black lacquer with an exotic wood veneer, this illuminated bar has a central cabinet with fluted doors and a mirrored interior.
It was in 1925 that Frankl really came into his own as a furniture designer with his renowned range of custom-made furniture inspired by the New York skyline and the skyscrapers that soared above his New York gallery. Typical Frankl “skyscraper” designs, which frequently evoke the pure lines found in the work of the Dutch painter Piet Mondrian, include tall, stepped chests of drawers, cabinets, and bookcases boasting an architectonic, rectilinear form. They were made from oak or California redwood and were sometimes
“Skyscraper” chest This rare Paul Frankl chest is asymmetrical, with long and short drawers, a single cabinet, a pull-out enamelled shelf in red and black, and geometrically shaped brass pulls.