Esoteric Survey

  Maxwell Yellen stool and various smalls Vivika and Otto Heino Sori Yanagi

  Stools by Henry P. Glass David Stewart creamer and two more Japanese books from a set that focuses on design details.  Here is my whole set.

This weekend I bought a crackle glaze ceramic bowl. With a 20" diameter, the scale is impressive. The first thing I thought of was Glen Lukens. The glaze and shallow bowl form seem so related. The clay looks right. Upon turning it over, I see it's signed Goldberg. It's a great signature too.   The obvious next step is to look for a Goldberg who studied under Lukens.  A lot of well-known ceramicists were taught by Lukens. This includes Doyle Lane, Beatrice Wood, Myrton Purkiss and  F. Carlton Ball.  Someone considerably more famous than all of them, but not as a ceramist, also took his ceramics class. That was a 19 year old Frank Gehry. Source: “Making Better Mud Pies”: A Conversation with Frank Gehry More about the Luken's Soriano house, which I visited a couple years ago, is  here .  So I obviously knew about the link between Gehry and Lukens, but what I didn't know is... " Frank Goldberg" changed his name to "Frank Gehry" in 1954, the same y...

  George Nelson vanity stool, early Jens Quistgaard bowl, David Cressey, Greta von Nessen Anywhere Lamp and a big crackle glaze bowl (more on that later). It's a baby Cressey. This Pro Artisan flamed glazed pot is a John Follis form. More clay

Greta von Nessen (December 6, 1898 – 1975)   The Swedish designer was a graduate of the School for Industrial Arts in Stockholm.  She met her german-born husband Walter when he was in Stockholm working for Greta’s father, a prominent architect. Greta and Walter moved to the US in 1925 and they established Nessen Studio in 1927.  In 1936 Walter designed the now prolific swing arm lamp. For some reason MoMA dates the lamp at 1927 but all the sources I've found say 1936. Photo: MoMA Or did he? Walter gets all the credit but perhaps he shouldn't. Source: Baltimore Sun, 1952 This also seems to suggest that Greta should be given some credit for the "famous Von Nessen swing arm". During WWII Greta worked as a multilingual operator with The United States Office of War Information (OWI). Walter died in 1943. She reopened Nessen Studio in 1945 and continued designing lamps. She said the only tradition she believed in is that of sound design and uncompromising quality. Source: ...

Jack Boyd X 2 and George Nelson ("Numbers", 1959 designed by George Nelson Office Associate Don Ervin)