Coffee, Hall, and End:
Small Tables by Studio Furnituremakers

May 4 – June 2 at Gallery NAGA

Continuing its exploration of the field of studio furniture, Gallery NAGA assembles for May new work by a large group of furnituremakers from throughout the country.  Most are well known figures, represented in major museum collections.  Some are young and emerging; some are not so young, but beginning to enjoy wider recognition.

Most of the pieces were made on the occasion of this exhibition, which is limited to work of no more than 36” in height, width, or depth.  As a consequence, the show presents some of the finest small pieces by some of the best studio furnituremakers in the country.

Coffee, Hall, and End: Small Tables by Studio Furnituremakers is on exhibition at Gallery NAGA from May 4 through June 2.  A reception for the makers and the public will be held at Gallery NAGA on Friday, May 4 from 6 to 8 pm.

The furnituremakers are

The smallest piece in the show is Garry Knox Bennett’s Tabletop Table with Drawer, at just under 12” high, constructed of Douglas fir, black bamboo, polished brass, pigmented epoxy, and beads.  Like other work by Bennett, who is based in Oakland, California, its form and decoration draws on Asian sources, as does his work in the recent Inspired by China exhibition at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts.  Bennett’s work was the subject of a major retrospective in 2001 at the American Craft Museum (now the Museum of Arts and Design) in New York.

Hank Gilpin, also a premiere figure in the field, is based in Rhode Island, has worked principally on private commissions for over twenty years, and rarely shows in galleries.  His small tables, like much of his work, begin with the wood, not with a design; he designs his pieces to display and express the character of the woods he wants to present.  Among the woods presented here are a highly figured box elder and a Tasmanian myrtle.

Rick Wrigley, working in Provincetown, Massachusetts and known for his exquisite joinery and exceptional marquetry, moves into entirely new terrain with an indoor/outdoor coffee table of cast concrete, marble, and soapstone mosaic tile.

And Kim Kelzer, working in Freeland, Washington, perhaps the sauciest in a field known for sly wit, offers a nightstand whose mahogany top is surrounded by a billowing pink skirt and stands on curvaceous legs, painted with black-and-white striped leggings, and balanced, in what might be point shoes, on point.