History of Furniture: Duncan Phyfe

Let's look back at a truly timeless genre of furniture for this installment of the History of Furniture.

Duncan Fife was born in Scotland in 1768 where he served as a cabinetmaker's apprentice but immigrated with his family to Albany, New York in 1784. After changing the spelling of his name to Phyfe, he opened his own business in 1794 and became a famous furniture maker. Known during his lifetime as the "United States Rage", he made Neoclassical furniture for the social and mercantile elite of New York, Philadelphia, and the American South where he was particularly popular.

While he may not have developed a style of furniture, he refined and elevated Neoclassical pieces, bringing them to the United States, and leaving a lasting impression of what fine furniture looks like. His pieces echo through what we consider "antique furniture" to be today.

A hallmark of his furniture was the lyre motif which you can see below on a chair splat, the base of a game table, and the sides of a bench.

Another feature of Phyfe furniture is the curved X-shape on the legs and backs of the curule chair, a design that dates back to ancient Rome.

Here is an ancient Roman coin showing Emperor Tiberius seated on a curule seat!

Happy designing!

Stickbulb

We started this month looking at the history of white plaster lighting fixtures, and in contrast to the artisan-made tactility of those fixtures, let's look at a company integrating LED into extremely minimalist designs using slim rectangles of wood.

Stickbulb was formed in 2012 by Russell Greenberg and Christopher Beardsley. Inspired by a pile of long linear wooden cut-offs in their workshop, the designers challenged themselves to develop a truly sustainable lighting system. As a starting point, they only considered designs that could be manufactured locally and affordably within a five mile radius of their New York City office. They chose to use reclaimed and sustainably sourced woods as a primary building material, and sourced energy efficient LED technologies and components. The collection was designed with the least number of parts possible and with connections that make the pieces easy to separate for maintenance, recycling, or reuse. The result is a light-up erector set of interchangeable components that allows for unlimited customization and creativity.

They make a wonderful collection of pendants, chandeliers, sconces, and floor lamps. Take a look at the strong line of the pieces below.

Happy designing!

The Timelessness of White Plaster

Ever since the rise of social media platforms like Instagram and Pinterest, interior design ideas, colors, shapes, textures, and patterns rise and fall at a dizzying pace. Things that used to become popular in an organic way, that is by installation and use, are now artificially turned into "trends" that cycle through in a matter of months. Images race across the internet and things become passé even before the last person can hit SEND.

So I appreciate an interior design item that has been around and will be around...an item that is not appealing to the Insta-crowd. And this subtle material shows up discreetly in design schemes, adding interest and style without appealing to the lowest common denominator. White plaster has been used for many different applications (see the marvelous white plaster furniture of John Dickinson here) but when used on lighting fixtures, it turns into something very special.

In 1954, the modern master artist Alberto Giacometti created three plaster chandeliers for his friend, the art critic, patron, and publisher Tériade (Stratis Eleftheriades). The one seen below hung in Tériade's dining room in his apartment on rue de Rennes in Paris. The artist had used white plaster in his sculptural work for some time. Giacometti had begun designing plaster lighting in the late 1920s, a period of intense collaboration with Jean-Michel Frank. And this particular light sold at auction for £2,045,000.

In this portrait of Alberto Giacometti in his studio, the chandelier can be seen hanging in the upper right.

Alberto created many works with his brother Diego who was an equally powerful and famous sculptor and designer. And in 1985, the Musée national Picasso-Paris commissioned Diego Giacometti, then in his 80s, to create a 50-piece collection of chairs, benches, lights and tables, designed exclusively for the Hôtel Salé (the historical site that houses the museum). He finished the commission just before his death in July 1985.

As I mentioned, the allure of such delicate, geometric white plaster light fixtures seems to transcend styles and trends.

Lighting designer Julie Neill has an entire line of white plaster fixtures: she created this light in homage to Diego Giacometti called, appropriately enough, the Diego Chandelier. The version here is a two-tier fixture but it also comes as a single tier.

Something very much like the Diego light can be spotted in the Paris apartment of Jean-Louis Deniot.

And this sitting room by Jeffrey Bilhuber sports what looks like the two-tiered version.

Interior designer Miles Redd designed a fixture in white plaster for Ballard.

There are lots of other versions of light fixtures in white plaster...

I love this cup fixture and lantern fixture from ALT For Living.

This white plaster Lotus chandelier from Tracey Garet for her company Apsara is both modern but organic enough to take its place in a traditional Chinoiserie dining room!

Here is a lovely, subtle chandelier in a beautifully bright dining room by Charlie Ferrer.

And even legendary interior designer Nicky Haslam has a white plaster lantern in his London home!

Happy designing!