Overview

The eighty-four pieces of studio furniture owned by the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art Museum constitute one of the largest assemblages of American studio furniture in the nation. Three former administrators-Lloyd Herman, Michael Monroe, and Kenneth Trapp-amassed a seminal collection that samples studio furniture's great diversity. From the carefully crafted stools of Tage Frid to the art deco chest painted by R ob Womack, from the one-of-a-kind Ghost Clock sculpture by Wendell Castle to the limited production stool by David Ebner, the collection highlights the astonishing variety of the American studio furniture movement. In this catalog, author Oscar P. Fitzgerald documents each piece of furniture in a descriptive illustrated entry. He also recounts the history of the collection's formation in an introductory essay, which illuminates the rationale and aesthetic choices of each curator and notes various donors and support organizations. Finally, Fitzgerald's statistical analysis of the collection, formulated from detailed interviews with the surviving artists, casts new light on workshop practices, marketing concerns, and other aspects of the contemporary studio furniture movement. A foreword by noted scholar and curator Paul Greenhalgh gives readers a brilliant overview of the studio furniture field and the intimate role furniture plays in daily life.

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9781565233652

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Reviews

Fitzgerald offers a long-overdue portfolio showcasing the Renwick Gallery's entire 84-piece collection of crafted American furniture. This critical resource will serve as a foundation for the study and historic preservation of 20th-century American furniture makers' work. Highly recommended. --Choice

Author Information

Oscar P. Fitzgerald, Ph.D., earned his M.A. and Ph.D. in history from Georgetown University and served as director of the Navy Museum in Washington, D.C., until he decided to pursue full time his passion as a furniture historian and decorative arts consultant. He is a member of the faculty of the Smithsonian Institution/Corcoran School Master's Program in the Decorative Arts, where he developed and teaches a core course on the studio furniture movement. His book Four Centuries of American Furniture is the standard reference work in the field. Fitzgerald's 2008 book, Studio Furniture of the Renwick Gallery, chronicles the development and expansion studio furniture movement in the United States through the Renwick Gallery's collection. In 2004, he was awarded a prestigious James Renwick Research Fellowship, which funded research for an essay published in the 2005 issue of Furniture Studio.

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