Paul Evans PE 131 Coffee Table, 1973

About the Item

The PE-131 coffee table, designed by Paul Evans, is an impressive piece within the line he created for Directional Furniture. It belongs to the popular bronze series PE100-200, introduced by Evans in 1964. Employing a combination of craftsmanship and experimental technology, Evans used epoxy to apply bronze over a frame, resulting in captivating a brutalist design with striking surfaces. Molded signature and date to base ‘PE 73’. Literature: Paul Evans Designer & Sculptor, Jeffrey Head, pg. 91 illustrates variation Image 6: Leen, Nina (Photographer). "Old Crafts Find New Hands." LIFE, 29 July 1966, pg. 34. About the artist: Paul Evans was an influential American furniture designer and sculptor. He was born on May 20, 1931, in Newtown, Pennsylvania. Evans' artistic journey began with his studies in sculpture and silversmithing at various institutions, including the Philadelphia Textile Institute in Philadelphia, the Rochester Institute of Technology, and the School for American Craftsmen in Rochester, New York. In 1952, Evans attended the prestigious Cranbrook Academy of Art in Michigan. Following his time at Cranbrook, he relocated to New Hope, Pennsylvania, where he collaborated with his mentor, Phillip Lloyd Powell. Powell, who had studied under renowned woodworker George Nakashima, influenced Evans' work. Together, they established a business and creative partnership. While Powell focused on woodwork, Evans specialized in working with metal. Evans gained recognition for his significant contributions to American furniture design and his involvement in the American Craft movement during the 1970s. He also became known for his association with the furniture manufacturer Directional Furniture. In the 1950s, Evans started by crafting copper chests and then transitioned to creating steel-front cabinets. In 1961, he and Powell held an exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Crafts in New York (now the Museum of Arts & Design). In 1964, Evans became the designer for Directional Furniture, where he introduced several furniture lines, including the Argente Series and the highly popular Cityscapes series. Evans incorporated techniques from the shipbuilding industry and continually evolved his approaches to produce large-scale furniture pieces. At the height of his productivity in the 1970s, he was delivering almost 400 pieces per week to New York City. In 1981, Evans departed from Directional Furniture and established his own showroom in New York City. Unfortunately, due to changing tastes and declining sales, he had to close down the showroom. Evans retired in 1987 but tragically passed away on March 7 of the same year, just two days after beginning his retirement. He died at the age of 56 in Nantucket, Massachusetts.

Creator:

Paul Evans (Artist)

Dimensions:

Height: 16 in (40.64 cm)Width: 57 in (144.78 cm)Depth: 45 in (114.3 cm)

Style:

Brutalist (In the Style Of)

Materials and Techniques:

Bronze,Epoxy Resin,Glass

Place of Origin:

United States

Period:

20th Century

Date of Manufacture:

1973

Condition:

Wear consistent with age and use.

Seller Location:

New York, NY

Reference Number:

Seller: PE 0011stDibs: LU863323090092

View Invoice

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.

Find a collection of authentic Paul Evans furniture today on 1stDibs.