Wendell Castle (1932-2018) Seven Days of the Week Dining Table and Ten Chairs, 1997

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The Springborn Collection of Contemporary Cra...

By Hindman

Mar 23, 2021

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• Lot Description
  Wendell Castle
  (1932-2018)
  Seven Days of the Week Dining Table and Ten Chairs, 1997
  ebonized mahogany, ash veneer, upholstery
  signed 'Castle 97'
  Table | H 29 x W 110 x D 66 inches, Chair | H 28 x W 24 x D 22 inches
  
  Exhibited:
  "Wendell Castle" Bryan Ohno Gallery, Seattle, WA, October 2-November 8, 1997
  "Living with Studio Furniture: Collection of Robert and Carolyn Springborn" Naples Museum of Art, Naples, FL, January 16-June 28, 2009
  
  Literature:
  Naples Museum of Art, Living with Studio Furniture: Collection of Robert and Carolyn Springborn, exh. cat., Naples, 2009, illustrated p. 14, 24 Emily Evans Eerdmans, Wendell Castle, A Catalogue Raisonne 1958-2012, New York, 2014, illustrated p. 328, 366
  Lot Essay:
  As furniture forms go, dining tables are hard to get right: a horizontal expanse that hides the undercarriage from view, surrounded by a set of chairs further prevents the table from making a statement. Yet the dining table is also one of the most important pieces of furniture in a home, a social object, around which conversation, family and friendship form.
  Wendell Castle, never one to shy from a challenge, returned to the typology often. He first tackled it in 1966, making three similar dining tables in walnut, one for his own use. All featured an ingenious means of opening up the form: a central aperture yielding a view down to a sculpted pedestal. These works exploit Castle’s signature stack lamination technique, which freed him from conventional joinery and allowed him to compose freely in space.
  Four decades later he returned to this idea for a dining table that he nicknamed the “hole in one.” (It was made for the 2015 exhibition Wendell Castle Remastered, at the Museum of Arts and Design.) It sports a triad of conical supports, the tallest seven feet high, and a top that extends outward in a long cantilever. The design was achieved with CNC carving, which Castle employed to hollow out the wooden top, then filling it with hard light foam, and overlaying a veneer. The result is a featherlight shape that extends breathtakingly into midair.
  Right at the midpoint between these two moments, in 1997, Castle created his Seven Days of the Week suite for the Springborns. He was on an impressive run, having just realized his monumental Star Cabinets (shown to great advantage at Peter Joseph Gallery in 1995). The strong organic silhouette of these designs is reprised in a more articulated form in the Seven Days pieces, all of which have legs suggestive of an arthropod’s. In the dining table, the legs stage a vivid contrast with the smooth asymmetrical top, recalling midcentury biomorphic designs by Isamu Noguchi.
  The accompanying chairs feature continuous frames, running along the floor, up, around, and back again. Castle made many variations on this low-slung format enacts a sort of visual lean, yielding pride of place to the majestic table and its sculptural base. Yet another wholly original solution, from a wholly original designer.
  -Glenn Adamson
  Property from the Collection of Dr. Robert C. Springborn and Mrs. Carolyn J. Springborn, Naples, Florida

  Condition

  
  For condition inquiries please contact moderndesigncr@hindmanauctions.com
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