Wendell Castle and the Art of Furniture Design
Furniture design is no mere exercise of utility. If art is a continuous dance with form, then furniture is a natural iteration of the arts. For the late American sculptor and furniture maker, Wendell Castle, the craft of furniture was synonymous with the pursuit of art.
Castle began his career in the post-World War II era of art and design that saw artists exploring new shapes and materials. Now, he is primarily recognized for his organic, abstract designs and unique approach towards woodworking. Looking at his work through a wider lens, he belonged to a group of artists that formed the studio craft movement, which prized craftsmanship and the beauty of materials. This fascination with the artistry of furniture, in fact, was largely a legacy of the nineteenth-century Arts and Crafts movement.
The American Arts and Crafts movement sprung out of England’s, where it first emerged during the late Victorian period.¹ Anxieties about industrial life arose as the world’s industry accelerated and large-scale production became standard. A reaction against machine production and wide-scale labor practices, the movement advocated for handcraftsmanship. There was a yearning to return to an earlier vision of American craft, where small, independent shops and craftsmen ruled furniture production.²
Machine-age modernity brought an end to the Arts and Crafts movement at large by the early 1920s.³ Still, artistic visionaries continued to favor handcraft and experiment with furniture as an artistic form. Castle was among a group of woodworkers that made their mark with sculptural furniture in the 1960s and who were inspired by the forefathers of American furniture design, such as Sam Maloof, George Nakashima, and Wharton Esherick.⁴
All young artists experience a moment when another artist’s work surprises and invigorates their creative journey, forever informing their artistic vision. Wharton Esherick was that artist for the college-aged Wendell Castle. After discovering his work in a book during art school in Kansas, Castle drove across the country over his spring break to visit the artist’s secluded, fantastical home in the countryside of Pennsylvania. Castle once said that before discovering Esherick, “the idea of becoming a furniture designer was, to say the least, remote.”⁵ After his visit to Pennsylvania, the burgeoning furniture designer began to appreciate the unique characteristics of wood.
Sculptural by nature, Castle’s designs blurred the boundaries between form and function. There was a certain magic in using organic material to create organic forms anew. Castle was able to accomplish this because of a technique called stack lamination, which allowed for innovation in shape and form. Once used in the 19th-century for making duck decoys, it involved stacking planks of wood and carving away at the block to create biomorphic shapes.⁶ Blending the heritage of craft with inventive aesthetics creates an imaginative language of design.
Wendell Castle’s oeuvre demonstrates that art is not only to be admired from a distance, protected behind a glass box, and chilled in the air conditioning of a gallery space. Transforming functional items into art pieces is an enduring feat of design. The objects that we touch, feel, and live among in our daily lives assume exceptional meaning when their function collides with distinct form.
"There was a certain magic in using organic material to create organic forms anew"
