Weinberg Modern

Drum-shaped lite table of molded iberglass mounted on three solid birch legs, designed and produced circa 1950 by Asian/American architectural lighting designer Bill Lam. William M.C...

Storage unit composed of two four-drawer (#9568) chests atop a single “LA” series base with laminated plywood legs. Designed by Clifford Pascoe for Pascoe Industries and produced cir...

Table lamp composed of an enameled steel tube with a tiltable Fiberglas reflector shade, designed and produced by Asian/American designer and educator Bill Lam in 1952. William M.C. (Bill) Lam (1924-2012), a pioneer in architectural lighting, was born and raised in Hawaii, entering MIT in 1941 and graduating with a degree in architecture in 1949 after serving as a pilot in the Army Air Corps in WWII. Influenced by Alvar Aalto and Charles Eames, both visiting professors at MIT, Lam established a small atelier, Lam Workshop, outside Boston in the late 1940’s, producing a series of his own lighting designs and a two-level cocktail table that gained widespread recognition in the national design press, earning MoMA Good Design selections in 1950 and 1951 as well as inclusion in close to 50 museum collections and exhibitions throughout the United States and distribution through Lightolier, Richards-Morgenthau (Raymor), Bloomingdale’s, Carroll Sagar, and numerous other showrooms and shops offering and promoting modern furnishings. His designs were merit specified for California Art & Architecture’s Case Study House program in 1950, featured in the Boston Institute of Contemporary Art’s Current Design quarterlies and in Furniture Forum, and chosen by General Electric and Westinghouse for model homes to demonstrate how to use light to best advantage. Lam would cease producing these designs in the later 1950’s, shifting his attention to the design and manufacture of prefabricated architectural lighting systems along with consulting, teaching, and writing—he taught lighting design at Harvard and MIT and authored two influential books for the lighting design profession. His 1950 drum-shaped lite-table was one of the first consumer products made of fiberglass reinforced plastic—it was shown alongside the Eames/Evans plastic shell chair in period ads for the material. He designed a fiberglass clip-on light diffuser fixture around the same time; it appeared in the Winter 1951/52 issue of Current Design with a date of design of April 1951. With a 14” diameter, it was pitched as a ceiling fixture or sconce and was intended to be “almost unbreakable and absolutely washable.” This element was then included in two pivoting armature wall lamps—one a Good Design selection--and a gooseneck floor lamp. All these designs emphasized functionality, flexibility, and economy and emitted light with a soft intimate glow. The present design was clearly to be part of this series—a steel cylinder using the fiberglass fixture to diffuse and throw light. The lamp was included in a lighting survey in Interiors in June, 1952. The description—"a tiltable Fiberglas reflector on a steel tube in enameled white, black, red or gray”--suggests that the lamp was intended for serial production and indicates that the tilting mechanism was integral to the design (the tilting finial on the lamp shows a patent date of 1942). Tilting the fixture through a range of motion to change how light is thrown locates the lamp in dialogue with several winning entries in the MoMA 1951...

Table lamp of aluminum and glazed twine wrapping with an original textile shade manufactured by the Mutual Sunset Lamp Company circa 1940’s. Stamped MSLC underneath along with 4729, ...

First edition monograph chronicling Noguchi’s formative and incredibly productive trips to Japan in the years 1930, 1950, 1951, and 1952 where he began the Akari series of bamboo and Washi paper lights...

Up-and-down "Versitable" by Tepper-Meyer Associates of San Francisco, produced by Fred Meyer circa 1954. The two-position design can function as a dining or writing table in the high...

Knock-down lounge chair with arms in solid carved pine with a woven plasticized palm seat and back, in the manner of Clara Porset, produced by Muebles Austin...

Lounge chair, model 49, designed by Franco Albini and produced by Knoll from 1949 until about 1967. This example circa 1950’s. Slender walnut frame with distinctive wrap-around arms,...

First American edition of Le Corbusier’s authoritative and influential tome on rationalist (read geometric) urban planning, wherein “the author has undertaken a close survey of the e...

Catalog of a sale held at Sotheby’s, New York, on December 15, 2006, showcasing the Arthur and Evelyn Krosnick collection of George Nakashima furniture and lighting, or actually the second collection, as the first—112 pieces-- was completely destroyed by fire in 1989. George Nakashima essentially stopped what he was doing and focused on rebuilding the collection replacing the lost items with what he deemed better examples, owing to his own technical and artistic maturation, though many were completed under the guidance of his daughter, Mira, after George passed away in 1990. Highlights include an important “Arlyn” table, lot 313, that fetched $822,000 (a record for the artist) on a pre-sale estimate of $300,000-$500,000; a superb “Minguren II” table that brought $180,000; a magnificent “Arlyn II” coffee table that sold for $204,000; and a set of eight Conoid chairs that sold for $96,000. The catalog of the Krosnick sale remains a touchstone for collectors interested in the work of George Nakashima. 103 pages with 85 lots, mostly with full color illustrations, printed wrappers. Price results...

First edition, stated, of this scholarly monograph/exhibition catalog on the architecture and design work of modernist French master Jean Prouve, evincing his unparalleled mastery of industrial technique and sculptural form. Comprised of a series of short essays addressing and contextualizing various aspects of Prouve’s architecture...

First edition of this scholarly study of the influential Florentine avant-garde architectural collective Superstudio, a driving force in the Radical architecture and design movement ...