The artistic furniture of Charles Rohlfs / Joseph Cunningham

New York, N.Y. : New Haven ; London : American Decorative Art 1900 Foundation ; Yale University Press, 2008. First Edition. Hardback. An exceptional copy; fine in an equally fine dw. Particularly and surprisingly well-preserved; tight, bright, clean and especially sharp-cornered. Literally as new and still in the publisher's protective shrink-wrap.; 8vo 8"" - 9"" tall; 282 pages; Physical description: xxi, 282 p. : ill. (some col.) ; 32 cm. Summary: Charles Rohlfs (1853-1936) ranked among the most innovative furniture makers at the turn of the twentieth century. Praised by the international press and exhibited throughout the United States and Europe, his beautiful works grew out of an interesting mix of styles that included Arts and Crafts, Art Nouveau, and proto-modernism. This book presents the first major study of this important American designer and craftsman, drawing upon new photographs and fresh sources of information.Alongside traditional historical approaches, the book presents detailed formal, structural, and stylistic analyses of Rohlfs' well-known masterpieces from major museums, together with lesser-known objects in public and private collections. The topics include discovering the contribution of Rohlfs' wife, mystery novelist Anna Katharine Green, to his designs; the far-ranging sources of his idiosyncratic motifs; his influence on Gustav Stickley's designs; his commissioned interiors; his efforts at self-promotion and marketing; and his attempts to define a conceptual framework for his artistic endeavour. Handsomely designed and illustrated, the book also features a complete set of unpublished period illustrations of over seventy works.