Butterbean Chair by CRAIG NUTT
Bleached maple, leather, paint.
38"H x 18"W x 23"D

NOTES: 27 was a separate adjoining space in the gallery that features work in different media, as well as furniture pieces produced in small editions.

Twelve Legged Hope Chest
Painted mahogany, aromatic cedar, steel, brass.
25"/36”H x 16.5”W x 12.5"D

Pritam & Eames introduced new work by Thomas Hucker on August 10 through September 18. Highly regarded as both an artist and craftsman, Hucker is deeply influenced by traditional Japanese aesthetics as well as contemporary Italian design thinking. “ His furniture combines qualities that are seemingly incompatible — buoyancy and mass, abstraction and utility, richness and plainness,” says Bebe Johnson, gallery partner. “As such, he never fails to come up with sophisticated, engaging work. ”

Work for his show at Pritam & Eames included a settee, a sideboard or foyer table, a pair of ebony upholstered chairs, and a low table. Some of his presentation drawings for furniture pieces were also included in the show.

LINDA CAPELLO, "Kimono", conte crayon, pastel on paper.

Cat Box by YUJI KUBO
Layered and combed lacquer over paulownia wood, sowed with silver powder and charcoal powder, Phillips’ screws .
16"H x 27"W x 5.5"D

The Furniture Society is proud to announce
the 2014 Award of Distinction Honorees,
Warren & Bebe Johnson
 
Notes from Andrew Glasgow, past Executive Director of The Furniture Society
and the American Craft Council, about this year's honorees:

The dynamic duo being recognized with this year's Furniture Society Award of Distinction is the inimitable Bebe Pritam Johnson and Warren Eames Johnson. I think it is safe to say that without Bebe and Warren it is unlikely that there would be a Furniture Society as we know it. I know I would have never been on the radar without Bebe's encouragement. I owe her a great deal.

Most of us know Bebe and Warren as the thoughtful, careful, and intentional owners of Pritam & Eames, the nation's premier gallery for Studio Furniture. One wonders, however, what brought them to this point.

Warren and Bebe both studied philosophy early in their academic careers. After receiving her Master's degree in Communications from Boston University, Bebe would begin her real-world career and become Director, Asian Program Operations at the Council on International Educational Exchange in New York. Warren studied law and received a LLB from the University of Illinois, and pursued graduate economics at MIT. His career took a turn, however, when the Johnsons moved to New York, and he ended up studying film at Columbia University where he received an MFA. Warren co-authored a book on film production, taught film at various institutions including Columbia, and was cameraman/editor on a number of internationally-based documentaries. After an interesting and successful decade, Warren and Bebe decided it was time for a change. 

So, following the likes of De Kooning, Pollack and Larsen, they decamped to East Hampton, a bit before the glitterati of the ‘80s and ‘90s and, in another turn of career, carved out a life dedicated to craft: educating and offering to the public -- a public that sought them out in a historic old steam laundry building in East Hampton that became Pritam & Eames -- an opportunity to acquire and live with this work. For the last 33 years, Pritam & Eames has existed, both powerfully and quietly, out in Long Island for a very appreciative public. 

Bebe and Warren were not satisfied with just selling the best studio furniture, they were also ambitious to contribute to the growing body of literature about this decorative arts field. This ambition led to conversations with makers and other intelligent aficionados that resulted in the publication of their book, Speaking of Furniture: Conversations with 14 American Masters [The Artist Book Foundation, 2013].  

Personally, I can't imagine anyone more deserving of the Award of Distinction than Bebe Pritam Johnson and Warren Eames Johnson. They built and crafted a business that has sustained them, given a boost to grateful makers, and played an important part in building the dialogue that underpins today's studio furniture movement. 

This year's Award of Distinction ceremony was hosted at the FS14 conference in Port Townsend, WA, on June 21.

In Fall 2014, PRITAM & EAMES closed its Race Lane location in East Hampton, NY. In May 2015, it relocated its exhibition space to the beautiful village of Somesville, Maine on Mt. Desert Island.
There, PRITAM & EAMES joined The Gallery at Somes Sound in a cooperative venture in which the two galleries showcase work by their artists on separate floors in an historic Somesville building.

In 2015 at its new location, PRITAM & EAMES exhibited work by Garry Knox Bennett, Ted Blachly,
Peter Bloch, Andy Buck, Wendell Castle, David Ebner, Hank Gilpin, Duncan Gowdy, Noel and Janene Hilliard, Thomas Hucker, Michael Hurwitz, Kristina Madsen, Gary Magakis, Wendy Maruyama, Alphonse Mattia, Judy Kensley McKie, Don Miller, Brian Newell, Richard Scott Newman, Timothy Philbrick, James Schriber, Greg Smith, Fran Taubman, and William Walker.

The gallery also featured work by painters Karen Kluglein, Aubrey Grainger, and Linda Capello; ceramist Fred Johnston; jewelers Tom Odell, Terry Logan, and Tia Kramer; glass artist Sam Stang; lacquer master Yuji Kubo; and metalsmith Maurice Hamburger.

Garry Knox Bennett has been a formidable figure in the American studio furniture movement for more than five decades. He's known for his unexpected combination of materials, inexhaustible creativity and drive, meticulous craftsmanship, and provocative, robust humor. It's not surprising that this imposing figure in the studio furniture field stands at 6-feet 9-inches.

Although the P&E partners had seen Garry's work over the years in museum exhibits, gallery shows and numerous publications, their real introduction came about in 2014, when they spent an evening with he and his wife, Sylvia, in their Oakland, CA home. It was there that they got a glimpse into how this artist thinks about things and how he lives. The furniture and art that he chooses to surround himself with -- all made by Bennett or his artist friends -- reveals an ultra-refined sensibility coupled with an artist's eye for color and form and an unapologetic embrace of utility. "It is the function of painting, sculpture or drawing to reveal the subjective feelings of the artist; it is the function of furniture making to make an objective record of reality to provide visual, ass-supporting truths about the real world of weight, storage and velocity" Bennett says. Garry Knox Bennett: Inside featured chairs, tables, benches, lamps and wall art drawn from Bennett's Oakland home. For this Maine show, the partners tried to convey a sense of this Bay Area artist with this selection of pieces that he's made over the years.

The California native has been the subject of numerous books, articles, and exhibition catalogues including New American Furniture: The Second Generation of Studio Furniture Makers, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 1989, and The Maker's Hand: American Studio Furniture 1940-1990, also published by the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 2003. Two books are of special interest: Made in Oakland: The Furniture of Garry Knox Bennett [American Craft Museum, 2001] New York, NY, and Garry Knox Bennett: Call Me Chairmaker [Bellevue Arts Museum, 2006] Bellevue, WA. In addition to chronicling the fabulous body of work produced in Bennett's 50-plus year career, these books include essays and interviews by Arthur Danto, late professor emeritus of philosophy, Columbia University; Edward S. Cooke, Charles F. Montgomery Professor, History of Art, American Decorative Arts and Material Culture, Yale University; and Glenn Adamson, Nanette L. Laitman Director, Museum of Arts & Design, New York, NY that lend a scholarly gravitas and locates his work in the continuum of history of design and art over the last century and a half. Both publications are available at P&E North.

Bennett's work is in the permanent collections of the Museum of Arts & Design, New York, NY; De Young Museum, San Francisco, CA; Fine Arts Museum, Mobile, AL; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA; Renwick Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC; Victoria & Albert Museum, London, England; Montreal Museum of Art, Montreal, Canada; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and Oakland Museum of California. Bennett has maintained his studio in his beloved Oakland, CA since 1966.

Pritam & Eames North featured the distinctive furniture of Thomas Hucker and Brian Newell at the Gallery at Somes Sound (GSS), Mount Desert Island, Maine, in an exhibition that ran through October 15.  

We’ve long felt that the work of these two artist-craftsmen push the boundaries of what’s possible in furniture making – as a result, they never fail to come up with sophisticated, original pieces. Although Hucker and Newell may draw upon traditional furniture forms, those precepts get run through their eccentric systems which results in a personal poetic that is unmistakably theirs. Both are enormously gifted artists who chose furniture as their vehicle for creative expression and who, as a result, helped shape a powerful movement in the 20th and 21st century decorative arts.

Hucker and Newell work in different parts of the country – Hucker in Hoboken, NJ and Newell in Fort Bragg, CA – but these two exemplars of American studio furniture share common ground. Each has a deep respect for the materials they use, which is most often wood. Both are deeply influenced by traditional Asian aesthetics, and both are hopelessly obsessive to get to the edge in their work. Further, they were trained by two of the most influential teachers in the studio furniture field: Tom Hucker studied with Jere Osgood at the Program in Artisanry at Boston University in the late 1970s, and Brian Newell’s life was forever changed when he came into contact with James Krenov at the College of the Redwoods in Fort Bragg, CA in the early 1980s. 

Some background:
Tom Hucker (b. 1955 in Bryn Mawr, PA) received his Certificate of Mastery from Boston University’s Program in Artisanry in 1980. While in Boston, he also studied the Japanese tea ceremony, attending the Urasenke school from 1977 to 1980. In 1982 he was an artist-in-residence at Tokyo University of Fine Arts. In 1989, he received a Fulbright grant to study interior and industrial design at Domus Academy in Milan, Italy. Hucker’s furniture often combines qualities that are seemingly incompatible — buoyancy and mass, abstraction and utility, richness and plainness. Although his work is influenced by traditional Japanese craft and contemporary Italian design, he also taps into de Kooning, Noguchi and Coltrane.

Hucker’s work is in the permanent collections of the Museum of Arts & Design (formerly the American Craft Museum), New York, NY; the Cooper Hewitt Museum, New York, NY: the Detroit Institute of Art; the Los Angeles County Museum; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; the Mint Museum, Charlotte, NC; the Racine Art Museum, Racine, WI; and the Renwick Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC. His work has been featured in museum exhibitions like Inspired by China at the Peabody-Essex Museum in Salem, MA, in 2006; The Maker’s Hand at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston in 2004; and the seminal New American Furniture exhibition in 1989, also at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Tom Hucker designs and fabricates custom furniture and lighting in his small shop in Hoboken, NJ, where he settled in 1990.

As a teenager in Flushing, MI in the 1970s, Brian Newell was already carving signs for local stores. Pierced carving by chisel would become his trademark. Eventually he found his way to the College of the Redwoods, CA where he trained with the legendary cabinetmaker, James Krenov. While no apostle to Krenov’s quiet furniture philosophy, the virtuosity of Newell’s work, nevertheless, exhibits the same finesse in the handling of wood as his teacher’s.

In 1997, Brian Newell married Mari Ito, a textile artist, and settled in her native Japan for the next ten years. There as a result of isolated studio space provided by his Japanese mother-in-law, he was granted an enviable, uninterrupted period of time in which he produced a dazzling body of work that made apparent his enormous gift to create furniture forms with forceful authority and breathtaking detail. In 2001, Newell had a solo exhibition at the Tokyo International Forum, Tokyo, Japan, which was followed with two one-person shows at Pritam & Eames, East Hampton, NY in 2004 and 2007.  

Newell has received two Windgate Fellowships for artist residencies – one at College of Arts + Design, University of New York, Purchase, NY in 2010, and one at San Diego State University, CA in 2014. His furniture was also featured in the Inspired by China exhibit at the Peabody-Essex Museum in Salem, MA in 2006. The Michigan native maintains two workshops: one in Fort Bragg, CA and another in Atsugi, Japan.

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