Hawk House / Stan Hawk
I don't condone eating turkey. However, if you have to, you should do it on a Hawk House Brazier.
I thought today would be a good day to post a Hawk House bio. The one here is much shorter than the one on the bio section section of the website, which can be found here.
Hawk House was a small but influential design venture that helped define the California Modern lifestyle. Founded by Edwin “Stan” Stanton Hawk Jr. and his wife, Ethyle O. Hawk, the company grew from ideas first tested in their 1939 Harwell Hamilton Harris–designed home in Silver Lake. Through collaborations with landscape architect Roberto Coelho Cardozo, Hawk House produced a line of inventive indoor-outdoor furnishings that became fixtures in Case Study Houses, and were embraced by leading designers, retailers, and museums. Though modest in scale and short-lived, Hawk House left an enduring imprint on the visual and material language of postwar California design.
Hawk House (1939) by Harwell Hamilton Harris
In 1947 Stan collaborated with his wife Ethyle and Landscape Architect Roberto Coelho-Cordoza on designs for Hawk House products. One article alludes to the concepts initially being developed for the Hawks own home and garden. The name “Hawk House” was copyrighted in 1948, the same year production began.
Roberto Coelho Cardozo (1923-2013) was of Portuguese descent and born in Santa Cruz, Californian. He studied Landscape Architecture at the University of California (Berkeley) from 1943-1947. After receiving his degree, he worked with Garrett Eckbo and three of the projects they collaborated on are featured in Eckbo’s landmark book, Landscape for Living (1950). In 1952 Roberto moved to Brazil and he began teaching at the University of São Paulo. He became a prominent figure in modern landscape design there and is credited with incorporating Landscape Architecture into the University’s architecture program. Along with influencing generations of architects at the University with ideas of California modernism, he worked on projects with many of the country’s top architects.
Image: Roberto Coelho-Cordoza and Burle Marx (1952) via Arquivo Arq
Hawk House products became fixtures of mid-century California architecture after being “Merit Specified” for the Arts & Architecture Case Study Houses starting in 1948. They appeared throughout architect-designed homes. The company’s identity became tied to the California Modern ideal of dissolving boundaries between inside and outside. In 1950, the Hawk House barbecue-brazier gained national acclaim through the Walker Art Center’s Everyday Art Quarterly and was showcased in Gregory Ain’s exhibition house at MoMA, signaling its importance as both a practical object and a symbol of postwar modern design.
By the mid-1950s Hawk House was no longer being advertised in magazines, including even in Arts & Architecture. Around that time, many smaller boutique manufactures like Hawk House were going out of business. The furniture industry was moving towards large corporations who could mass produce items more efficiently (with some copying designs) and sell them at cheaper prices.
Stan passed away in 1958, at the age of 53. Ethyl sold the Hawk House property in 1960.
Read the full Hawk House bio here.