Esoteric Survey

Malcolm Leland ceramics and Esther and Gross Wood lamp Sori Yanagi

C. Carl Jennings, Luther Conover, Kipp Stewart, Steve Salisian, and Gross Wood! The California pickings were good this weekend! A sweet little Japanese lantern, Sori Yanagi soy sauce pitcher and bowl by Tatsuzō Shimaoka. Nelson bubbles

This is actually from last weekend. I didn't go anywhere this weekend and that makes this the last pile of the year. It was a decent one I think.  Tony Paul chair for Woodlin Hall and two George Nelson for Howard Miller perforated metal clocks.  I haven't had one of these  model 2204 Howard Miller clocks in a long time.  The more I looked at the clocks, the more familiar they looked. I was dying to get home to compare them to Esther and Gross Wood bowls. As you can see, it's an exact match.  I'm not a George Nelson/Howard Miller expert by any stretch of the imagination but I do know they used some other items by different designers that they transformed into clocks. The seat of a Fritz Hansen stool and Bitossi ceramics are the ones that come to mind.  That makes it a California Design Nelson Clock.  I guess you can add Good Design to that as well. 

  Gross Wood, Ettore Sottsass and Frederick Weinberg One of my extra curricular activities in digging through stacks of yard sticks.

This weekend I picked up a book on window decorating. There were several photos of windows by Gump's of San Francisco, including this one featuring chairs by  Van Keppel Green . After 157 years in business, Gump's is shutting the doors on their San Francisco storefront. Founded in 1861 by the Gump's family, they were established to cater to the new millionaire class resulting from the gold rush. The focus was on luxury and imported items until World War II made it difficult to import from international vendors. At that point, Gump's began looking to domestic artists and craftspeople, such as Edith Heath... Gump's buyer, Bill Brewer, saw Edith's work on display at the California Palace of the Legion of Honor. The contents of the show were consigned to Gump's after the show ended and sold well. Brewer then offered her a space they had been using on Clay St. (no joke) that they had been using to host ceramic workshops. Gump's subsidised the r...

Stool and Akari lamp by Isamu Noguchi  Irving Harper for George Nelson - 1958 John Caruthers Esther and Gross Wood For books For plants For doors Andrew Bergloff Tackett and animals

Alexander Girard hovering over three Gross Wood bowls. That's Edgar Kaufmann Jr holding a cup. It was taken at the 1952-1953 Good Design Exhibition, held at MoMA New York. Source: Museum of Modern Art Esther and Gross Wood bowl, complete with a Good Design label. Catalog for the exhibition. Product shot from 1953

It was a great weekend for iron, including a Victor Bisharat table. I'm not making the mistake of selling this one. See here . Gross Wood Smalls

Alvin Lustig chair for Paramount Furniture in Los Angeles. I can't wait to get the awful 90s green suede off. Lamps, including Gross Wood and Heifetz Clay, including Beato and David Stewart

Gross Wood Hundreds of different designs.  I guess they had more time on their hands in the 50s.

Bowl by Gross Wood Floor legs Table legs the Pitts 

John Keal for Pacific Iron and Gross Wood  Smalls