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Paul Evans Sculpted Bronze and Mohair Custom Sofa, 1960s

About the Item

Here's a piece for all the Paul Evans collectors out there. This sensational, sculpted bronze sofa came from the original owners who custom ordered the piece through Directional Furniture in 1969. These "sculpted bronze" designs were only available "to-the-trade". Each piece was custom ordered by a designer for a client, and then uniquely crafted in the Paul Evans studio. The "sculpted bronze" technique was employed by hand-sculpting an epoxy resin, and then coating the materials in an atomized cold-cast bronze. Because of this organic handmade process, no two pieces were ever the same - each one was imbued with its own nuances and idiosyncrasies. This specific example, a 3-seat sofa, is particularly uncommon. Only a couple similar variations have popped up over the last few decades, none as splendid as this. The sofa is powerful and regal in its appearance, with the sculpted bronze frame taking on a dramatic and resolute posture in any space. The softness of the camel mohair upholstery plays beautifully with it, adding warmth and creating a harmony with the more brutalist nature of the exterior. It is sure to catch eyes. This investment worthy sofa is more than just a sofa, it is a sculpture, a work of art, a collectible treasure by one of the most important artists of the American Studio Craft Movement.

Creator:

Paul Evans (Designer)

Dimensions:

Height: 33 in (83.82 cm)Width: 90 in (228.6 cm)Depth: 33 in (83.82 cm)Seat Height: 18 in (45.72 cm)

Style:

Brutalist (Of the Period)

Materials and Techniques:

Bronze,Mohair

Place of Origin:

United States

Period:

1960-1969

Date of Manufacture:

1969

Condition:

Reupholstered. Wear consistent with age and use. Excellent restored condition. Frame is in wonderful original condition. Upholstery has been newly updated in a luxurious mohair fabric.

Seller Location:

Coronado, CA

Reference Number:

1stDibs: LU8105232598852

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Shop All Paul Evans

Paul Evans

A designer and sculptor, Paul Evans was a wild card of late 20th century modernism. A leading light of the American Studio Furniture movement, Evans’s sideboards, credenzas, coffee tables and other work manifests a singular aesthetic sense, as well as a seemingly contradictory appreciation for both folk art forms and for new materials and technologies.

Evans’s primary material was metal, not wood, which was favored by his fellow studio designers, and Bucks County, Pennsylvania, neighbors George Nakashima and Phillip Lloyd Powell. He trained in metallurgy and studied at the Cranbrook Academy of Art, the famed crucible of modern design and art in suburban Detroit. For a time early in his career, Evans also worked at Sturbridge Village, a historical “living museum” in Massachusetts, where he gave demonstrations as a costumed silversmith.

Evans’s earliest work unites these influences. The pieces that made his reputation are known as “sculpted-front” cabinets: wood cases faced with box-like high-relief patinated steel mounts laid out in a grid pattern. Each mount contains a metal emblem, or glyph, and the effect is that of a brawny quilt.

Evans’s later work falls into three distinct style groups. His sculpted-bronze pieces, begun in the mid-1960s, show Evans at his most expressive. He employed a technique in which resin is hand-shaped, and later sprayed with a metal coating, allowing for artistic nuance in the making of chairs, tables and case pieces. Later in the decade and into the 1970s, Evans produced his Argente series for celebrated manufacturer Directional (a brand known to vintage mid-century modern furniture collectors everywhere): consoles and other furniture forms that feature aluminum and pigment-infused metal surfaces welded into abstract organic forms and patterns.

Last, Evans's Cityscape design series — a milestone in the history of brutalist design — meshed perfectly with the sleek, “high tech” sensibility of the later ’70s. Evans constructed boxy forms and faced them with irregular mosaic patterns that mixed rectangular plaques of chromed steel, bronze or burlwood veneer. These, like all of Paul Evans’s designs, are both useful and eye-catching. But their appeal has another, more visceral quality: these pieces have clearly been touched by an artist’s hand.

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