Pair of Paul Evans Sculpted Bronze Lounge Chairs
About the Item
- Creator:Paul Evans (Designer, Manufacturer)
- Dimensions:Height: 32 in (81.28 cm)Width: 25.5 in (64.77 cm)Depth: 29.5 in (74.93 cm)Seat Height: 19 in (48.26 cm)
- Sold As:Set of 2
- Style:Brutalist (Of the Period)
- Materials and Techniques:
- Place of Origin:
- Period:
- Date of Manufacture:20th Century
- Condition:Wear consistent with age and use. very good, possibly reupholstered, minor wear, wear consistent with age and light use.
- Seller Location:West Palm Beach, FL
- Reference Number:1stDibs: LU902512814762
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.
Find a collection of authentic Paul Evans furniture today on 1stDibs.
You May Also Like
1990s Brutalist Lounge Chairs
Metal, Brass
Vintage 1950s Lounge Chairs
Fabric
Vintage 1970s American Chairs
Brass
Vintage 1970s American Mid-Century Modern Lounge Chairs
Upholstery, Wood
Mid-20th Century Mid-Century Modern Lounge Chairs
Metal
Vintage 1970s American Brutalist Dining Room Chairs
Metal, Bronze
Late 20th Century Post-Modern Chairs
Fabric
Vintage 1960s Danish Mid-Century Modern Lounge Chairs
Upholstery, Wood
Vintage 1970s Italian Mid-Century Modern Lounge Chairs
Faux Leather, Teak
Vintage 1960s American Brutalist Armchairs
Bronze
