Risom, Jens: RISOM CATALOGS & PRICE LISTS, ETC. Pleasantville, NY: Jens Risom Design, Inc. January 1962 – August 1964.

Archive from the Library of James Prestini

JEN RISOM CATALOGS & PRICE LISTS, ETC.
13 Items

Jens Risom

Jens Risom: RISOM CATALOGS & PRICE LISTS, ETC. Pleasantville, NY: Jens Risom Design, Inc. January 1962 – August 1964. Original editions. Twelve pieces of contemporary furniture promotional pieces in a variety of sizes and formats housed in a Jens Risom Design Inc. oversized mailing envelope. With the exception of the envelope all pieces in nearly fine condition with reliably bruised spine heels.

On offer are these thirteen items:

• Jens Risom Design Inc. Mailing Envelope: Undated “First Class Letter Enclosed” inkstamp to unmailed envelope well worn to edges. A good example that previously housed the following twelve items.
• 1961 Catalog I: 20 pages of Dining Tables, Small Desks, Book Cases, R Cabinets and Bedroom Headboards. 8.5 x 11 catalog with screen printed stapled thick wrappers, illustrated with black and white product photography and measured specifications. All expected curatorial information present. Spine heel bruised.
• 1961 Catalog II: 16 pages of End Tables, Low Tables, Occasional Tables, Stools and Benches. 8.5 x 11 catalog with screen printed stapled thick wrappers, illustrated with black and white product photography and measured specifications. All expected curatorial information present. Upper corner bruised.
• 1961 Catalog III: 36 pages of Sofas, Upholstered Armchairs, Side Chairs and Arm Chairs. 8.5 x 11 catalog with screen printed stapled thick wrappers, illustrated with black and white product photography and measured specifications. All expected curatorial information present. Corners lightly bruised.
• 1961 Catalog IV: 36 pages of Group 8, Group Nine, Desk Chairs, Conference Room and Executive Dining. 8.5 x 11 catalog with screen printed stapled thick wrappers, illustrated with black and white product photography and measured specifications. All expected curatorial information present. Spine heel bruised.
• 1962 New Design Aditions to the Risom Collection of Business and Residential Furniture: 12 pages with saddle stitched self wrappers. 8.5 x 11 booklet illustrated with black and white product photography and measured specifications. All expected curatorial information present. A nearly fine copy.
• 1963 New Design Aditions to the Risom Collection: 4 pages with an interior fold out in saddle stitched self wrappers. 8.5 x 11 booklet illustrated with black and white product photography and measured specifications. All expected curatorial information present. A nearly fine copy.
• 1963 Risom Group Seven: 6 pages with an interior fold out page in self wrappers. 8.5 x 11 booklet illustrated with black and white product photography and measured specifications. All expected curatorial information present. A nearly fine copy.
• 1963 –1964 Price List / Contemporary Furniture for Business and Residential Interiors: 64 pages in printed saddle stitched glossy wrappers. 8.5 x 11 catalog illustrated with black and white measured specifications. All expected curatorial information present. Typed errata sheet laid in, dated March 31, 1963. Spine heel bruised, so a nearly fine copy.
• 1964 Risom Group Eight Variations: 12 pages in thick printed saddle stitched wrappers. 8.5 x 11 booklet illustrated with black and white product photography and measured specifications. All expected curatorial information present. Spine heel bruised, so a nearly fine copy.
• 1964 Risom Group NINE– Executive: 16 pages in thick printed saddle stitched wrappers. 8.5 x 11 booklet illustrated with a color frontis followed by black and white product photography and measured specifications. All expected curatorial information present. Spine heel bruised, so a nearly fine copy.
• 1964 Risom Group Nine Executive Price List: 12 pages in printed saddle stitched self wrappers. 8.5 x 11 booklet illustrated black and white product photography and measured specifications. All expected curatorial information present. Spine heel bruised, so a nearly fine copy.
• Jens Risom Letterhead: TLS addressed to James Prestini and dated August 20, 1964. Debossed letterhead printed in two colors on laid paper. Folded once with trivial wear to left edge.

Jens Risom (Denmark, 1916 – 2016) came to the United States in the 1930's as a free-lance designer and later started his own firm for the design and manufacture of fine contemporary furniture. Unlike architect Alvar Aalto or Hans Wegner whose international influence remained rooted in Finland and Denmark respectively, Jens Risom emigrated from Europe to the U.S. when he was just 23 years of age. Like other Scandinavian designers such as Josef Frank and Kaare Klint, Risom continued to honor tradition in modern design, combining old and new in highly original ways.

Jens Risom’s career has spanned nearly sixty years. He began his study of design in the Copehagen workshop of Kaare Klint in 1935 and joined Ernst Kuhn’s architectural office in 1938, where he designed furniture and interiors. In 1939, Risom emigrated to the U.S. and in 1941 designed the first chair manufactured by Knoll. Risom described the chair as "very basic, very simple, inexpensive, easy to make." The chair was constructed with a birch wood frame and, because of wartime materials constraints, cheap but strong army surplus webbing and has inspired countless imitations.

Risom continued to create simple, well-crafted modern furniture with Knoll and George Jensen, but established his own design studio, Jens Risom Design, in 1946. The studio was acquired by Dictaphone in 1970 and in 1973, Risom became chief executive of Design Control, a Connecticut based design consultancy.

In the 1970's, he acted as a trustee of the Rhode Island School of Design. Now in his eighties, Jens Risom continues to be active and his work continues to reflect the Danish approach to modernism, with its emphasis on traditional values and the human need for warmth, beauty and simplicity. Modern American design owes much to his unfailing sense of proportion, commitment to practicality and insight into the forms of modern living.

James Prestini (Connecticut, 1908 – Berkeley, 1993) studied mechanical engineering at Yale, and then continued his study at the Institute for Design in Chicago, where he was exposed to the unified Bauhaus philosophy of art and craft: "Craft is the body of structure. Art is the soul of structure. Optimum creativity integrates both."

Prestini blended craft with function, most notably with his turned lathe bowls, using straight-grained woods to create thin bowls with an appearance similar to glass and ceramics. He also produced experimental furniture and over 400 sculptures over a 50 year career while a professor of fine arts at the University of California, Berkeley.

He was part of a design team that won the Museum of Modern Art's furniture competition in 1948 with a jointless chair made from durable wood pulp.

At least 260 of his sculptures are in the permanent collections of museums including the Museum of Modern Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Smithsonian Institution in Washington and the Berlin Bauhaus-Archiv.