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John Dickinson Lacquered Y Table, ca 1970s

Name: John Dickinson Lacquered Y Table, ca 1970s
Brand: John Dickinson
Price: 10115.96 AUD
Availability: InStock
Rating: 5 (2 reviews)

$6,500

£4,855.19

€5,628.82

CA$9,025.09

A$10,115.96

CHF 5,267.08

MX$123,520.22

NOK 66,872.83

SEK 63,389.43

DKK 41,997.07

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About the Item

John Dickinson Lacquered Y Table, ca 1970s This is a rare Y-table (model 118) in lacquered resin, designed by John Dickinson. This is a special table and would fit in a variety of design styles. The size is perfect to use as a side or occasional table. Table measures 21-1/4" high x 19-3/4" diameter. John Dickinson was a designer celebrated for cultivating an inventive style that blended diverse influences such as eighteenth century English forms, Art Deco, Greek classicism and surrealism, to create modern pieces that endure as both sophisticated and playful. John Dickinson was born in 1920 and grew up in Berkeley. He attended the Parsons School of Design, where he studied under the renowned interior designer Albert Hadley. Dickinson worked for a few years in New York at interior design firms and department stores, but moved back to San Francisco to establish his own studio in 1956. Early influences for Dickinson included Jean-Michel Frank’s pared-down interiors, rendered in luxe materials and with a pastiche of historical styles, Serge Roche’s classicist re-imaginations and T.H. Robsjohn-Gibbings’ Klismos designs. Dickinson mostly worked for a small, devoted circle of private collectors in California, designing rooms and homes for clients in totality, which is how he thought his vision was best expressed. He created his first widely-distributed pieces of furniture for Drexel’s Et Cetera line in 1965 and received his first large-scale commission in 1971 to design the interior of the I. Magnin department store on Michigan Avenue in Chicago. His first complete line of furniture debuted at Macy’s, San Francisco in 1978 and featured what had become emblems of Dickinson’s style: a monochromatic palette, tromp l’œil effects, using scale to dramatic effect and mixing historical and cultural motifs. The collection included stark white bookcases resembling skyscrapers, nightstands with Roman column bases, a dresser that appeared to be made of concrete slabs, tables with legs in the shape of animal bones and stackable trunks that looked as though they’d been buried for years and recently unearthed. While lauded by the design community for its originality, the collection was expensive and its references were too erudite and eccentric for the average consumer. Dickinson’s focus returned to private commissions and in 1980 he completed the interiors for the one-hundred-room Sonoma Mission Inn & Spa, which was owned by a long-time supporter of his work, Carlene Safdie. In 1982 Dickinson passed away, leaving behind a singular body of work, that mostly only exists in his furniture designs; there is one extant Dickinson interior in a private home in Northern California and Dickinson’s former home, a renovated nineteenth century firehouse regarded as his magnum opus, no longer exists. San Francisco Museum of Modern Art holds a robust collection of Dickinson’s designs and held a retrospective of his work in 2003, honoring the unwavering commitment Dickinson had to creating designs that surprise, amuse and delight those who live with them. Source: LA Modern

Creator:

John Dickinson (Designer)

Dimensions:

Height: 21.25 in (53.98 cm)Diameter: 19.75 in (50.17 cm)

Style:

Organic Modern (Of the Period)

Materials and Techniques:

Lacquer,Resin,Lacquered

Place of Origin:

United States

Period:

1970-1979

Date of Manufacture:

Circa 1970s

Condition:

Wear consistent with age and use. Expected vintage wear including light scratches and wear on the top and scuffs and scrapes on the feet. View detailed images for full condition.

Seller Location:

Cathedral City, CA

Reference Number:

Seller: OC 98491stDibs: LU8352245046732

Shop All John Dickinson

John Dickinson

Playful, sculptural, unexpected: Illustrious designer and decorator John Dickinson created interiors, lighting fixtures, seating and other furnishings that were wholly peculiar and unlike anything seen before. The Berkeley, California, native mined design movements of bygone eras for elements he would later integrate into what would become his signature anthropomorphic work.

Dickinson was inspired by Art Deco designers such as Jean-Michel Frank, who similarly drew on the past for his extravagant pieces, and found appeal in the claw-foot tables and seating that Georgian-era furniture makers produced.

Although Dickinson attended the Parsons School of Design in New York, he returned to the West Coast following graduation. He worked for decorating firms and furniture stores, and, in 1956, he set up his own practice in San Francisco, where he reinterpreted heritage in his sculptural lamps, stools and chairs with legs that terminate in hooves or resemble bones and tree branches.

Dickinson’s spare but sophisticated furniture is often associated with a “golden age” of San Francisco decorating that includes the work of designers Charles Pfister and Michael Taylor. Wider recognition over the years owes to collectors’ interest and exhibits such as “Fantasy and Function: The Furniture of John Dickinson,” which opened at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in 2003.

Despite his irreverent approach, Dickinson’s pieces were luxury items. He crafted lamps of unpolished brass and tables in chalky white plaster with a resin coating. His most iconic works are his Etruscan tables with legs resembling hooved animal feet and his Three-Legged African table, which was inspired by an artifact he discovered in an import shop. Dickinson took on only handpicked, young, well-to-do clients who were willing to give him free rein to experiment with these unusual forms and industrial materials. Leading department stores like Lord & Taylor, however, were also among his clientele. In 1977, Dickinson was commissioned to design a furniture collection for Macy’s. It featured white lacquered bookcases that drew on urban architecture and table lamps with bodies that mimicked animal bones.

Owing to his untimely death, and the fact that he worked in plaster, a highly breakable material, few of Dickinson’s original pieces exist to this day. Their scarcity renders every remaining Dickinson design a valuable heirloom guaranteed to make a statement in any room.

Find vintage John Dickinson furniture on 1stDibs.

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