Catenary Chairs by George Nelson & Associates for Herman Miller

A pair of Vintage Catenary chairs are up for auction at the upcoming Important Design Auction at Wright. Designed by George Nelson & Associates in 1962 the chairs are made from leather, chrome-plated steel and enameled steel.

Catenary Chairs Model 6380, 1962, by George Nelson & Associates, for Herman Miller, Auction Estimate: $4,000–5,000 at Wright

Squeeze Cup by Maya Vinitsky at MAD

Maya Vinitsky’s Squeeze Cup, a combined juicer and cup, simplifies a two-step process—squeezing an orange and then transferring the contents into a glass—reinventing an everyday task in an unexpected way.

Exhibition: Object Factory: The Art of Industrial Ceramics,
Through September 13 at The Museum of Arts and Design
via: NYT

Model: Frank Lloyd Wright: Herbert Jacobs House #1

The New York Times shows an Image from “Frank Lloyd Wright: From Within Outward,” an exhibition currently on view at the Guggenheim Museum, the models of Wright’s designs are attracting as much attention as the exhibition itself. Perhaps the most notable model is that of Wright’s Herbert Jacobs House #1 of 1936-37, the first of the architect’s pioneering open-plan, energy-efficient Usonian houses. The basswood model takes the house’s components — from its window frames to its innovative copper-piped radiant-heating system — and explodes them, so that they seem to hang in midair.

Frank Lloyd Wright: The Re-Model, at The Moment, New York Times

Microbotic Sculpture by Christopher Conte

Robots and androids aren’t the sole property of science fiction. Christopher Conte’s sculptures are more like old-fashioned studies rendered with today’s materials: anatomical forms on the verge of motion. You can picture them crawling around the next Star Trek movie, or under a jar in a medical curiosities museum.

Microbotic Sculpture, by Christopher Conte

Harry Bertoia’s $100,000 Dandelion

Harry Bertoia is best known as a sculptor, but he also designed furniture for Knoll, who often used his pieces as props in their advertising. The “Dandelions” are made from from gilt stainless steel, brass with a slate base. This work is one of seven Dandelions exhibited at Eastman Kodak Pavilion at the New York World’s Fair in 1964.

Untitled (Dandelion), 1964, by Harry Bertoia, Estimate: $100,000–150,000 at Wright
+ Midcentury Modernist

Rare Zapotec Effigy Vessel at Sotheby’s Auction

Sotheby’s upcoming auction of African, Oceanic & Pre-Columbian Art includes this important vessel showing Olmec influence and symbolism in regional interpretations. It is one of the few full-bodied ceramic depictions of the omnipotent earth monster or jaguar-dragon of Olmec inspiration. The dragon zoomorph is well known in Olmec art through schematized incised motifs on blackware ceramics but it is rarely seen in three-dimensional form. This vessel is finely modeled in typical Monte Alban fine-grained grayware, and shows early forms of Zapotec iconography such as buccal snout, bifurcated fang, and scrolling brows.

A Rare Zapotec Effigy Vessel, Monte Alban II, ca. 200 B.C. to 250 A.D.
$40,000 - $60,000 at Sotheby’s, New York
Update : Hammer Price with Buyer’s Premium: $92,500 USD

Exhibition: Le Corbusier — The Art of Architecture

Le Corbusier — The Art of Architecture is the first major survey in London of the internationally renowned architect in more than 20 years. This timely reassessment presents a wealth of original models, interior settings, drawings, furniture, photographs, films, tapestries, paintings, sculpture and books by designed and written by the architect himself.

The exhibition charts how Le Corbusier’s work changed dramatically over the years from the regional vernacular of his early houses in Switzerland, to his iconic Purist villas and interiors of the 1920s, to the dynamic synthesis achieved between his art and architecture as exemplified by his chapel at Ronchamp (1950-55), and his civic buildings in Chandigarh, India (1952-64). Important works by his collaborators, such as Fernand Léger, Amédée Ozenfant, Charlotte Perriand and Jean Prouvé are also featured.

Exhibition: The Art of Architecture: 19 Feb - 24 May at Barbican Art Gallery London, UK

Exhibition: Spaces Etc./An Exercise in Utility

Ron Gilad’s latest body of work, Spaces Etc./An Exercise in Utility has launched its own site.

Gilad refuses to be pigeonholed and is not interested in distinctions. Instead he moves with ease between disciplines and materials. Borrowing from the history of art and design, he draws references from the work of artists such as René Magritte, Giorgio de Chirico, and Marcel Duchamp, as well as a later generation of designers such as the Italian masters Enzo Mari, Achille and Pier Giacomo Castiglioni, and Ettore Sottsass. Links can also be made to more recent innovators, especially the work of Jurgen Bey and Richard Hutten for Droog in the Netherlands. Like them he takes an intuitive, rather than a rationalist, approach to his practice imbuing his works with a diverse range of ideas that seek to radically alter the evaluation of an object beyond its utility.

Exhibition: Spaces Etc./An Exercise in Utility by Ron Gilad, April 29 - May 9, at Wright, Chicago, USA

Exhibition: Ron Gilad: Spaces Etc. / an Exercise in Utility

A philosopher of the everyday object, Ron Gilad’s designs invite viewers to question and even doubt the form and functionality of everyday objects, furniture and lighting. Ceaselessly exploring and conceptualizing notions of proportion and scale; Gilad’s works do indeed (as his own website asserts) sit on the fat, delicious line between the abstract and the functional. From a Room Divider fashioned to resemble a door and blatantly reminding the user that he or she is entering or exiting a divided space, to a Freestanding Shelve, a tabletop surface that literally sits atop a pair of human-like legs, Gilad’s designs are an amalgamation of material wit and aesthetic play.

The works of Ron Gilad can be found within the permanent collections of many museums and institutions, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Art Institute of Chicago and the Museum of Arts and Design in New York. Born in Tel-Aviv, Ron Gilad lives and works in New York.

Exhibition: Ron Gilad: Spaces Etc. / an Exercise in Utility, April 29 - May 9, at Wright, Chicago, USA

Moon Fragment by Tokujin Yoshioka

Japanese designer Tokujin Yoshioka has designed two perfume bottles for French jeweller Cartier. Called Moon Fragment, the bottles each include a single diamond. They are on show at the Tokyo National Museum exhibition ‘Story of…’ - memories of Cartier creations, directed by Yoshioka.

Moon Fragment by Tokujin Yoshioka, for Cartier
via: dezeen and designboom