Design - Remembering
Wendell Castle
“We have lost a giant in the world
of design.” Writes Glen Adamson on
the Friedman Benda Gallery website. “Inexhaustibly creative to the last, Wendell Castle was in the midst of
preparing a new body of work when he passed away this week, at the age of
eighty-five. It was typical of him. Wendell was a man who never stopped
dreaming, or making those dreams a reality.”
The Last time I photographed Wendell
Castle was at the Friedman Benda Gallery in New York in 2016, above, on the
occasion of the Andrea Branzi Interiors
exhibition.
Wendell Castle and Marc Benda
Wendell Castle
- Ghost Rider
Rocking Chair – 2010
Barry Friedman Ltd.
“A decade before the concept of
“radical design” emerged, he began re-imagining the furniture form at every
level. His earliest works were at once sinuous and sculptural, all
choreographed curves, not a straight line or right angle to be seen. They were
made using traditional joinery, but with highly unconventional cage-like
structures and muscular curved components, which he carved from gunstocks,
having found a supply of unused blanks at a nearby armament factory. He made massive bio-morphic tables, capacious
seating forms, twisting spiral staircases, un-categorizable pieces that engaged
the walls and floor of a room in unconventional ways. While he was operating in
the discipline of furniture, he retained the instincts and formal references of
sculpture – the work was more indebted to Henry Moore than anything else that
was happening then or indeed, had ever happened before in furniture design.
He was also a hugely important
ambassador for American craft and design. Soft-spoken and true to his modest midwestern
roots, he cut a dashing figure. Always stylish in his candy-colored spectacles,
well-tailored jackets and spotless shoes, his quietly confident presence lifted
the tone of any gathering.”
Glen Adamson