PRESTINI'S ART IN WOOD
Edgar Kaufmann Jr. [introduction], Barbara Morgan [photography]
Edgar Kaufmann Jr. [introduction], Barbara Morgan [photography]: PRESTINI'S ART IN WOOD. Lake Forest, IL: The Pocahontas Press, distributed by Pantheon Books, 1950. First edition [limited to 1,000 copies]. Square quarto. Plastic comb binding. Silkscreened thick boards. Glossy photo print tipped onto front board. 8 pp. letterpressed text. 24 pp. of sheet-fed gravure photographs. Two tips missing from comb binding, otherwise a fine copy.
9.75 x 11 plastic comb bound folio with letterpressed text frontis followed by 24 pages of gorgeous gravures photographed by Barbara Morgan. Introduction by Edgar Kaufmann Jr. Images of a selection of bowls, platters, trays and cigarette cups carved from wood by James Prestini. Also includes a section on the artist's experimental designs and sculptures. A rare and wonderful document.
"This feat has been Prestini's, to suggest within the limits of simple craft the human pathos of art and the clean, bold certainties of science. He has made grand things that are not overwhelming, beautiful things that are not personal unveilings, and simple things that do not urge usefulness to excuse their simplicity . . . Art or not, craft or not, bowls or plain shapes, they speak directly and amply of our day to our day." -- Edgar Kauffman, Jr.
James Prestini [1908 - 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.
Edgar Kaufmann Jr. [1910–1989] studied painting and typography in Europe before serving as an apprentice architect at Frank Lloyd Wright’s Taliesin Foundation from 1933 to 1934. The Kaufmanns of Pittsburgh commissioned two of the iconic American residences of the 20th-century, Wright’s Fallingwater in 1936 and then Richard Neutra’s Palm Springs Desert House in 1946. Edgar Jr. joined the Museum of Modern Art in 1946 as director of the Industrial Design Department, a position he held until 1955. While at MoMA, he initiated the Good Design program [1950 - 1955] and was a strong proponent of uniform industrial design education standards.