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RARE IMPORTANT CHEST OF DRAWERS, 1928

Currency:USD Category:Everything Else / Other Start Price:NA Estimated At:22,000.00 - 24,000.00 USD
RARE IMPORTANT CHEST OF DRAWERS, 1928
<b>Title: </b>RARE IMPORTANT CHEST OF DRAWERS, 1928
<b>Designer: </b>SERGE CHERMAYEFF
<b>Description: </b>manufactured by Waring & Gillow Ltd., England; aluminium, pine the top drawer stamped "WARING & GILLOW LTD," and with the firm's metal label 37 3/4 x 47 1/4 x 18 3/8 in. (96.6 x 121 x 47 cm)
<b>Provenance: </b>
<b>Literature: </b>"Room IX, Double Bedroom," MODERN ART IN FRENCH AND ENGLISH DECORATION AND FURNITURE, Nov 1928 -Jan 1929, pp. 23-24 Alan Powers, Serge Chermayeff: Designer, Architect, Teacher, London, 2001, pp. 15-21 for further reading on the exhibition Peyton Skipwith, Britain between the wars 1919-1939, microcosm of an age, exh. cat., The Fine Art Society, London, 2004, p. 59
<b>Exhibitions: </b>Modern Art in French and English Furniture and Decoration , Waring & Gillow Galleries, LONDON, November 1928 - January 1929 Britain between the wars 1919-1939, microcosm of an age, The Fine Art Society, London, 2004
<b>Notes: </b>Following the Russian revolution, Russian born Chermayeff was stranded in Britain where he was completing his education. He later became a leading architect, theorist and educator of the International Modern Movement. Chermayeff's debut as head of the Modern Art Studio of the leading British cabinetmakers, Waring & Gillow has been described by the design historian Nikolaus Pevsner as: "The moment Modernism entered Britain." This seminal opening exhibition in 1928, "Modern Art in French & English Furniture & Decoration," was described in the firm's catalogue for the double bedroom, from which this lot comes, "the whole of the scheme is carried out in pine, the walls being of planks of natural wood slightly waxed and the furniture toned down to a cigar box colour and enriched with aluminium tops and handles." In the 1930's he worked in partnership with the émigré German Modernist architect Erich Mendelsohn, with whom he produced some of the most notable buildings of the period, in the U.K. The most important being the internationally renowned De La Warr pavilion of 1936. Chermayeff was also responsible, with the architects Wells Coates and Raymond McGath, for the interior design of the new headquarters of the British Broadcasting Corporation. Following this distinguished career in the U.K., he emigrated to the United States in 1940, becoming an American citizen in 1946. Between 1942-46 he was director of the department of design at Brooklyn College, New York, where he set up a radically new integrated approach to design education, based on the Bauhaus model, which set a new standard for teaching designers in the U.S. In 1946 he was appointed by Walter Gropius to succeed the former Bauhaus master, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy as the Director of the Institute of Design, Chicago, " the New Bauhaus." Subsequently, from 1951 to 1953 he taught at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, between 1953-61 he was professor of architecture at Harvard University and from 1961 until his retirement in 1969, professor of architecture at Yale University.