This Designer Is Famous for His Art Furniture Including 8 Tall Clocks
Wendell Castle—artist, craftsman, and educator—once explained that while form is paramount, "the function must be there. . . . A chair which is beautiful but cannot be sat in is nothing."
As Castle told Newsweek in 1968, "I'chiliad trying to get furniture off its legs and to be itself." The furniture maker who once appeared on To Tell the Truth, and would go along to go a giant of the craft and design world, passed away on Jan xx at historic period 85.
Smithsonian visitors familiar with the collections on view at the Smithsonian American Art Museum's Renwick Gallery likely have encountered Ghost Clock. The 1985 artwork has proven to be one of Castle'southward most endearing and popular works. While a trompe 50'oeil cloth—meaning to "fool the eye"—draped over a sculpture which is merely clock-shaped, does not find the weigh of form and function that enlivens so much of Castle's piece of furniture design, information technology does back up evidence of his expert adroitness.
The ephemera of artists often have delightful stories to tell and as a reference archivist working in the collections of the Smithsonian Archives of American Art, I followed a trail rich with documentation showing Castle's contributions to craft, including his own papers, the gallery records of two of his dealers Lee Nordness and Barbara Fendrick, two oral history interviews conducted in 1981 and 2012 and several letters.
One of them was from Mrs. Margo Mueller, who happened to catch Castle'southward appearance in 1966 on television. In a note addressed "Love Sir," she wrote:
"On one of the daytime programs of 'To Tell The Truth' a human appeared who made article of furniture out of pieces of wood. He took whole hunks of trees to create his piece of work. I believe he was a former sculptor," wrote Mueller, before continuing to inquire about the three pieces shown on the air—a lamp, a desk and chair ready, and a breast of drawers—and "any information you could supply concerning this admirer, as I take forgotten his name."
Castle's advent on "To Tell the Truth," occurred the same year he was featured inLIFE magazine and also when he became acquainted with Nordness who contacted him well-nigh designing living room article of furniture for his flat.
"I am just mad almost your furniture, feeling that your handsome pieces are equally much sculpture as article of furniture," he wrote. Nordness came to represent Castle in his gallery and in 1968, gave him a one-human being bear witness at his gallery. It was not Castle's offset solo exhibition, only Nordness marketed the event toCUE magazine andFirm and Garden every bit the first showing for an creative person-craftsman in a "fine arts gallery."
The idea of elevating craft into the realm of fine art, was 1 Nordness was committed to and explored in the seminal exhibition "Objects: USA,"which he organized with Paul J. Smith, the director of the Museum of Contemporary Crafts (now the Museum of Fine art and Pattern) acting as an advisor.
The show opened in 1969 at the National Collection of Fine Arts, known today equally the Smithsonian American Art Museum, and travelled throughout the United States and internationally, nether the sponsorship of the Johnson Wax Company until 1974. The exhibition featured 308 objects past more than 200 artists including Anni Albers, Robert Arneson, Lenore Tawney, Peter Voulkos, Dale Chihuly, Brent Kingston, Clayton Bailey, Ruth Duckworth and Lenore Tawney.
Meryl Seacrest noted in theWashington Mail service that the organizers "promise to bear witness that the line traditionally dividing crafts from the realm of art is getting finer and at times may disappear altogether." In the "Wood" section alongside Wharton Esherick, Sam Maloof and George Nakashima, among others, Wendell Castle had two pieces,Tabular array-Chair-Stool (1968) and a mahogany and silver leafage piece,Desk(1968). A third sliceTable (1969), made of laminated plastic, was in the "Plastic" section.
Castle's procedure involved gluing and clamping one-inch layers of wood together to create big sculptural blocks that he then, as Gloria Dunlap notes, "carved away to create his furniture, rather than using more than traditional methods of furniture making that involved calculation rather than taking away." He created a wide variety of forms in his work—sometimes bulbous, sinewy or serpentine, just always balanced.
Even a chair with three legs tapering down into graceful points, or hisStool from 1963, which has iv thin legs that at the same time buckle in and splay outward like a newborn foal, are at once delicate and sturdy. A 1989 headline in theDetroit Free Press declared him to exist "The man who makes furniture dance."
Forth with experimenting with form, Castle imbued his work with a sense of playfulness. In particular, hisMolar Chair of 1969, part of a series of brightly colored laminated plastic furniture with curves resembling teeth. And, histrompe l'oeilworks, outset exhibited in 1981 at Alexander F. Milliken, Inc. On the pieceTable with Gloves and Keys, from that show, Joseph Giovannini writes,
But the gloves were more than an illusion. It seemed that Castle was throwing down the gauntlet, declaring that this table, which otherwise looked very much like an heirloom panel was not a table: the gloves and keys made the slice nonfunctional, or at best merely partly functional. What seemed to exist furniture was, in fact, a work of art. What had promised to exist a show of craftsmanship turned out to be an art exhibition.
Castle'due south shows sometimes had "punny" titles: "Rockin'" a show made upwards primarily of chairs, and "Wendell Castle: About Time" which explored his clock designs. His involvement in clocks grew out of a want not to be seen solely equally a furniture designer, but his notion, expressed in an interview for the "About Time" itemize: "at that place [is] one slice of piece of furniture that'southward more like a sculpture than whatever other—a tall case clock. . . . You don't sit on it, y'all don't put anything in it, y'all don't swallow off of it, y'all don't do any of the normal things that you lot practice with furniture. You wait at information technology. And in some sense that's what you lot exercise with sculpture."
During the mid-1980s Castle began producing clocks, often with evocative titles such asZiggurat Clock,Jester Clock and4 Years Earlier Lunch Clock, which had an original poem by Edward Lucie-Smith carved into its back. (Lucie-Smith also produced a limited edition chapbook of eight short verses in 1986, "Poems for Clocks for Wendell Castell.") One of his clock sculptures was not a working timepiece, simply likewise marked an catastrophe. As Castle told Jeannine Falino in his 2012 interview for the Archives,
MR. CASTLE: . . . But it was very soon after that I met [Alexander] Milliken, then the first thing I had to show Milliken were thetrompe l'oeil pieces.
And he mounted a show—almost the same show; I may have added a slice or 2—and he sold them all. Merely at that point I decided I didn't want to do that anymore considering, you know, you'd figured out how to do it, and the function that's most exciting to me is that drawing and discovering new shapes and new ideas and new things.
Well, at that place wasn't any room for that. That was only going to be doing the same thing over again. And at that point I also had gotten interested in the clock series—
MS. FALINO: Yeah.
MR. CASTLE: — virtually that same time, because I had an employee, Greg Bloomfield, who was this kind of like a mechanical guy. He knew how to brand things that worked, like clocks. But then also at the same time I decided that I would do one finaltrompe l'oeil piece, and that would be the stop of it, and that was the gramps clock called the Ghost Clock .
Castle'sGhost Clock is a haunting sculpture, cleverly shrouded, and fooling the centre. Simply one thing this enigmatic piece of work makes clear is Wendell Castle'south indelible legacy every bit a craftsman and artist.
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Source: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/wendell-castle-man-who-made-furniture-dance-dead-85-180967982/
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