Weekend / Stuff
Pond Farm / Marguerite Wildenhain
Ben Seibel for Jenfred Ware. Distributed by Raymor.
Ashtray from the Craig Ellwood designed South Bay Bank
Stool by Phillip Lewis, as seen in the exhibition, STOOLS from the JF Chen Collection, by Marta & JF Chen.
More on the exhibition, here.
A book was published by Marta and JF Chen.
I've had a number of these stools over the years but never knew who designed them. I was told by a dealer who I purchased one from that he once had one with a Made in Japan sticker under the seat. That turns out to be not true. It turns out that they were made by a San Francisco Bay Area woodworker named Phillip Lewis. The information came from the family who purchased one from a friend in San Francisco. Fortunately that information came about about as Marta was cataloging the exhibition and I was able to pass along the information. The family also mentioned that the stools were sold at Cost Plus Imports in 1962. This makes a lot of sense since almost every stool I have seen seen was in the Bay Area, where Cost Plus Imports began.
Cost Plus Imports opened its first store at 2552 Taylor Street on Fisherman's Wharf in San Francisco in 1958. In 1962, with the help of Tandy Corporation, a new venture for the company expanded to Texas. In 1975 these stores were renamed Pier 1 Imports, and would be sold in 1966. The Cost Plus Imports stores in California were not renamed and continued to operate as a separate company.
An ad for the Fisherman Wharf location.
Unfortunately, I couldn't find any ads showing the Phillip Lewis stool. I did come across this ad showing a stool by Isamu Kenmochi. In 1969 article, a company executive stated that in the early days of the chain, 80% of their inventory was being imported from Japan.
They also imported a lot of Danish furniture.
This is getting way off topic so here's a stool to bring it back in.