Esoteric Survey

 La Gardo Tackett, Carl Auböck and Andreas Hansen. I stayed close to home this weekend and didn't find very much.  The letter tray was designed by Andreas Hansen and made in Denmark. 

  Hans Coray and Eames I really like this EC-127.  Speaking of Hans Coray and Eames. Here is a Coray chair at the Eames House.  Martz bookends A little enamel by Thomas Royal. In addition to being a fine enamelist in his own right, he assisted Ellamarie and Jackson Woolley in their studio. I was lucky enough to meet him a few times. This was a gift to me from friends of his. 

  Kay Sekimachi: Geometries Illuminates Six Decades of Berkeley-Based Artist’s Creative Practice  A major new survey of textile art by Kay Sekimachi at the UC Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA). The exhibition includes work made between 1965 and just relatively recently. Most of the pieces come from the collection of  Forrest L. Merrill . Sekimachi (1926- ) was born in Northern California to two Japanese immigrants. Her childhood in Berkeley was not easy; her father died at a young age, her mother was poor, and she spent a few years of her youth living in an internment camp for Japanese citizens following the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Later in life, when Sekimachi attended California College of Arts and Crafts, a friend introduced her to the weaving room. Fascinated by the sight of the loomers at work, Sekimachi immediately decided to spend all of her savings on a loom. She would soon push the limits of what weaving could produce, creating sculptural fo...

I was able to visit my favorite rest stop on the way back from the Bay Area,  I also picked up some chairs by Luther Conover, George Nakashima and Eames! And how about this Betty Feves pot? Smalls by Peter Shire, Krenit and David Stewart.  I was also finally able to pick up a Traditional Rural Potteries in Present Japan woodblock by Serizawa Keisuke. This is the 1963 version.

If you aren't already aware of this project, you should be.  TOAD (textiles, objects & documents) was created by Alexander Wendl in collaboration with Vince Bravo . They describe it as a privately curated, digital archive that explores historical textiles, objects, and documents from the mid-century period.  Their goal is to make to make private collections public. In addition to their own incredible collections, they include pieces from fellow collectors.  Their most recent post was on a personal favorite, Laverne International .  The ephemera stacks are deep at TOAD, with a major emphasis on Herman Miller. I'm super jealous of those boxes.   Vince has one of the (if not the) best Alexander Girard collections around.  The La Fonda del Sol post includes items from the collections of Alexander, Vince and Will-Wade Gray . I don't know what's more impressive, the fact that a single restaurant had that many matchbook designs or that Will has amassed so m...