Garry Knox Bennett - Contemporary Studio Artworks from the Estate of Jack R. Bershad New York Wednesday, June 8, 2022 | Phillips

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  • Provenance

    Franklin Parrasch Gallery, New York
    Acquired from the above by the present owner, 1990

  • Literature

    Michael A. Stone, Contemporary American Woodworkers, Layton, Utah, 1986, pp. 134, 143 for similar forms in wood
    Ursula Ilse-Neuman, Made in Oakland: The Furniture of Garry Knox Bennett, exh. cat., American Craft Museum, New York, 2001, p. 59 for similar examples

  • Catalogue Essay

    A self-proclaimed “furnituremaker,” Garry Knox Bennett mastered an impressively disparate portfolio of mediums during his six-decade career. Attending the California College of Arts and Crafts (now the California College of the Arts) in the early 1960s, he trained initially as a painter, later pursuing design. Acclaimed for his inventive formal language, Bennett rejected the postmodern return to basic forms, more interested in the hyperbolized shapes of finely crafted materials. A testament to his craftsmanship, Bennett designed without prior sketches or planning, privileging a direct experience with his materials, which included wood, metal, glass and marble, amongst others. This California sensibility, bringing fine craft to experimental syntheses of materials and forms, is appreciable in the present lot, the Black Freighter console table, executed in 1990 during the zenith of Bennett’s career. Known for his affability, Bennett inscribed the underside of the table with a note thanking Jack and Helen Bershad for their patronage. Heralded in the craft and design communities, his work is held in the permanent collections of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; and the Victoria & Albert Museum, London, among others.

Contemporary Studio Artworks from the Estate of Jack R. Bershad

64

"Black Freighter" console table

1990
Patinated steel.
39 x 111 x 19 1/2 in. (99.1 x 281.9 x 49.5 cm)
Fabricated by Reynaldo Terrazas. Top impressed IN OAKLAND GKB ANNO 90 and underside inscribed in marker IN OAKLAND/GKB ANNO/90/MR & MRS BERSHAD/THANKS.

Estimate
$4,000 - 6,000 

Sold for $8,190

Contact Specialist

DesignNewYork@phillips.com
212-940-1268

Contemporary Studio Artworks from the Estate of Jack R. Bershad

New York Auction 8 June 2022