Design
Summer News & Notes
In the Mix:
Dealer, Decorator, Designer
Evan Lobel has owned a gallery for fifteen years and sells some of the most venerable names in design. But in 2011, he became a designer in his own right when he released a collection of furniture called Night Star. His clean-lined commodes, tables, and upholstered pieces not only speak to Hollywood Regency style, but also explore the interaction of light and dark by juxtaposing materials. Radiant patterns pepper the collection, emblazoning the doors of a commode in hand-cut ebony, or the surface of a writing desk in pale, lacquered goatskin.
Lobel has a knack for wrestling unwieldy materials into complex arrangements of pattern—take for instance his resin console inset with lacquered slices of bamboo—so it’s not surprising that he cites designers like Edward Wormley, Ward Bennett, and Karl Springer (whose works he has sold for years) as pivotal inspirations. It follows that every detail is executed by hand, including the exquisite tufting on a series of sofas and chairs mounted on carved mahogany pedestals. “It’s all about wonderful materials,” Lobel says. “And, of course, the best craftsmanship possible.” lobelmodern.com
Michael Boyd debuted his new collection, PLANEfurniture, at Los Angeles’s Edward Cella Art and Architecture in April. Not surprisingly, planes and other geometries are central to the collection’s minimalistic, case-study feel. So are warm, sustainable materials (jute rope and plywood), striking primary colors (red), and “affordable” price points, all of which place the collection squarely in the wake of pioneering modernists such as Jean Prouvé, Donald Judd, and Gerrit Rietveld. Organized into four series named as sparely as the designs themselves—BLOCKseries, WEDGEseries, PLANKseries, and RODseries—the collection is at once pretentious and utilitarian, as comfortable in a gallery as it is on your patio. boyddesign.com
In Editions, her first collection of furniture, Liz O’Brien takes a stroll through decorative history, tweaking lines and techniques as she goes. Her Frances dining chair embodies Queen Anne style with sass, showing off cabriole legs and a plucky feminine shape. And her
Liz O’Brien’s Pamela sofa from her Editions collection.
Pamela sofa celebrates the baroque (minus the kitsch) with tactile, scalloped lines. In many ways, Editions is an ode to eclecticism, aimed at decorators who wouldn’t blink at pairing a low Turkish ottoman with a French moderne chair. It’s also a case of revisionist history, inspired in part by George Balanchine, who is quoted on a page of the collection’s flipbook. “There are no new steps, only new combinations,” the late choreographer declared. Still, even a series of fabric-wrapped tables, finished to gleam like malachite, lapis, or onyx, puts a positive spin on 1970s style. lizobrien.com
RUSTIC furniture usually veers between campy (think too much bark) and preppy (Adirondack chairs). But a new collection by Paul Loebach for Mattermade, called Great Camp, finds middle ground and breaks the mold. Inspired by the upstate New York vacation culture of the late nineteenth century, the collection includes a wicker-seated armchair, a credenza, a dresser, and a coatrack sculpted from twig-like pieces of bark-free ash. Carved details and smooth, faceted legs give the collection the appearance of being whittled by hand, but in fact, the elements are fashioned from computerized machining techniques developed specifically for this project, then joined together by hand. Loebach injects a playful shot of color, too (in homage, perhaps, to the autumnal pleasures of these northeastern mountains), offering the chair in yellow, red, or blue in limited editions. mattermatters.com
—Damaris Colhoun
