A Virtuoso in Wood

By: Marilyn Fish

January 2007

Wharton Esherick (1887–1970) was an artist, vegetarian and nudist, who changed tracks early in

Wharton Esherick with "Essie," 1933, cocobola.

his career. From the high precincts of fine art he traveled an unexplored path into a thicket of furniture, turning tables, chairs and even simple salad bowls into sculptural objects. While his earliest designs were massive and intricately carved with low reliefs, he moved on to experiment with cubism, expressionism and biomorphism, finally achieving an organic style based on the natural growth patterns of trees.

In 1912, Esherick—then an aspiring Impressionist—and his wife, both upper-middle-class Philadelphians, decided to live an “organic,” Bohemian life in Paoli, Pennsylvania, a rural community only 25 miles from downtown and a railroad stop on the Main Line. They did indeed live simply, in fact nearly on a subsistence level, but also made important alliances with artists and wealthy patrons at the nearby Rose Valley Arts and Crafts community and the community’s theater.

During the 1920s, Esherick began printing woodblock book illustrations and creating attention-grabbing picture frames, sculpture and furniture. Unable to break into the painting market, he reluctantly folded up his easel in 1925 and from then on considered himself a sculptor, whether he was working on functional or non-functional forms.

Esherick’s early forays into furniture design grew out of his aversion to the hand-me-down Victoriana he and his wife had grown up with, some of which he rebuilt or redecorated by carving low reliefs on the surfaces. When it came to building from scratch, he approached each piece as a sculptor, making a clay model to communicate the form to a local cabinetmaker, John Schmidt, then collaborating with Schmidt to determine how to turn the shape into a piece of functional furniture. Robert Aibel of the Moderne Gallery in Philadelphia suggests that in so doing Esherick more or less turned the Modernist dictum “form follows function” on its head.


When visitors to Esherick’s home saw his furniture, they found it irresistible and often

Painted sideboard, c. 1950, found parts with cherry top and pulls.

commissioned him to design whole environments and series of individual pieces. As a result, the great majority of his work was site-specific and custom-made for a small circle of Philadelphians and New Yorkers. Decades later, as his clients’ homes were dismantled and their collections scattered, heirs began to sell off the treasures in dribs and drabs. When pieces come to market they attract a limited but passionate circle of collectors. One of the foremost is Jack Lenor Larsen, whose Esherick collection is displayed at the LongHouse Reserve, his East Hampton museum and gardens. The Philadelphia Museum of Art (PMA) purchased the architectural elements of the music room of magazine publisher Curtis Bok (built 1935–37; demolished 1989) in anticipation of recreating the room in the coming years. If you visit now, you can see the fireplace wall from the Bok library.

Esherick’s greatest achievement by all accounts was his hand-made “Sculpting Studio,” begun in 1926 and continuously under construction until a few years before his death in 1970. Since 1972, the building he described as his “autobiography in wood” has served as the Wharton Esherick Museum. PMA curator David Barquist describes it as “a magical place. A place where studio furniture fans come to learn about Esherick and 20th century wood-working.” It’s filled to the rafters with pieces made to satisfy the designer’s unique spatial, functional and aesthetic needs. The centerpiece is a red oak spiral stairs like no other, created in homage to the process of natural growth, with rooms branching off at several levels like clusters of ripe fruit. “Visitors experience a sense of wonder and joy at Esherick’s inventiveness,” says curator Rob Leonard. “Many say, ‘I just want to move in.’”

On several occasions, including the 1939–40 World’s Fair in New York, Esherick’s work was displayed in 1940, parts of the house, including the stairs and a dining set, were removed and displayed, leading to Esherick’s discovery by furniture makers, architects, designers and critics. He got further exposure in the late 1960s, when the emerging counterculture brought a new appreciation of handcraftsmanship. Today Esherick’s disciples now include a second generation of studio furniture makers, including Wendell Castle, David Ebner and Sam Maloof, who dubbed Esherick “the Dean of American Craftsmen.”


Esherick’s fame increased, but it took several more decades until significant pieces were offered for

Studio spiral stairway, 1930, with side stair, 1940, oak. Show with "Oblivion," 1934, walnut.

sale. In the spring and summer of 1996, the Moderne Gallery sold the World’s Fair table and chairs to Larsen (offered at $150,000) and smaller pieces ranging from a pair of walnut trays ($2,000) to a pair of end tables ($10,000) to others. On October 21 and 22, 2006, Rago Art and Auction Center in Lambertville, New Jersey, auctioned a group of Esherick material including a faceted Victrola cabinet that sold for $90,000 and an oak dining table for $156,000. A three-part walnut screen ornamented with stylized wheat sheaves, fields and ebonized birds brought $312,000. John Sollo, a partner at Rago, calls the piece, which blurs the line between sculpture and furniture design, “the best object I ever saw in my whole life.”

Like the screen, everything Esherick designed possesses an element of experimentation or, as he would put it, of play. Indeed, he declared to anyone who asked about his work, “If it isn’t fun, it isn’t worth doing.” The spirit of fun and inventiveness is certainly among the many reasons Esherick’s furniture is so appealing. The man who enjoyed making it so much would want you to enjoy using it.

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Marilyn Fish is a freelance writer on decorative arts and the editor-in-chief of Style 1900 magazine, the quarterly journal of the Arts and Crafts movement.

FOR MORE INFORMATION

►LongHouse Reserve
133 Hands Creek Rd.
East Hampton, N.Y.
631.329.3568
www.LongHouse.org

►Moderne Gallery
Philadelphia
215.923.8536
www.ModerneGallery.com

►Phildelphia Museum of Art
Philadelphia
215.763.8100
www.PhilaMuseum.org

►Rago Arts and Auction Center
Lambertville, N.J.
609.397.9374
www.RagoArts.com
 
►The Wharton Esherick Museum
Paoli, Pa.
610.644.5822
www.Levins.com/Esherick.html

BOOKS

Half a Century in Wood by Mansfield Bascom
(Paoli: The Wharton Esherick Museum, 1988)
 
The Wharton Esherick Museum Studio and Collection
(Paoli: The Wharton Esherick Museum, 1977; second edition, 1984).