Furniture that Winks: Wit and Conversation in Postmodern Studio Furniture, 1979-1989

Focusing on the work of furniture artists Garry Knox Bennett, Mitch Ryerson, Edward Zucca and John Cederquist, this thesis explores how craft furniture makers in the late 1970s and 1980s engaged and contributed to postmodern thought through their creations. Ultimately responding to (even rejecting) modernist tendencies of first-generation studio furniture makers, these furniture artists began to investigate the way furniture could communicate narrative, social and political statements, as well as jokes, by returning to ornamentation and historical references while employing new materials. Additionally, Cederquist's work in particular joins topical concerns expressed by postmodern theorists, bringing awareness to the prevalence of images and simulacra at the expense of the real in the postmodern era.

Author

• Hood, Julia Elizabeth T.

Language

• en

Keyword

• craft
• studio furniture
• furniture history
• postmodernism
• 20th-century design

Date created

• 2011

Type of Work

• Master's Thesis

License

• All rights reserved

Rights statement

• In Copyright

GW Unit

• Decorative Arts

Degree

• M.A.

Advisor

• Hardwick, Jeffrey

Committee Member(s)

• Adamson, Glenn

Persistent URL

•  https://scholarspace.library.gwu.edu/etd/ks65hc302