MAILBOX
I am an 83-year-old American architect who was born in the French concession of Shanghai. I lived 16 years in China, speak Mandarin, Shanghainese and the Szu-chuan dialects to this day. I am disappointed Ms. Shen failed to mention the “American architect in Shanghai,” Mr. Elliott Hazzard, who arrived in Shanghai in 1920 and died in 1943 in that city in a Japanese civilian internment camp during WWII [“Shanghai: Sino Deco,” Spring 2008]. Hazzard designed the following in Shanghai: Brookside Apartments on Ave. Haig; addition to Wing-On department store on Nanking Rd.; Haig Court apartments on Ave. Haig; Judge Franklin residence; the American Columbia Country Club on Great Western Ave. Hazzard did many more Shanghai projects, all in the Art Deco heritage.
–William Krisel, A.I.A., Los Angeles, CA

As a ceramist and advertiser in your magazine, I was a dismayed to read of the “death of craft,” which took place in the ‘90s, according to Garth Clark [“Looking Forward, Looking Back,” Spring 2008]. His analysis of the changes of the last 20 years is self-serving, since he has built his career and his gallery’s success on that view. I would like to suggest that if contemporary design is now, as he states, “creative, diverse and playful with materials,” it is because artists who began working with materials as craftsmen broke the stranglehold of tradition and showed contemporary industrial designers that they could do it, too. As a ceramist working in porcelain, it has always been the challenge of executing a design with only my hands and a few tools that has made it compelling, not only for myself but for the many clients who buy and enjoy my work. If the craft movement is dead, someone should tell the three or four thousand ceramists, curators, teachers, collectors and gallery owners who attended the recent National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts (NCECA) conference in Pittsburgh and filled the city with clay work, including pottery. Someone should tell the people at the Philadelphia Museum of Art who organize the Craft Show every year, the artists who participate and the thousands who come to buy treasures for their homes. Someone should tell them, but I don’t think it would stop them. I hope it won’t stop your readers either.
–Elizabeth Lurie, Farmington Hills, MI

After receiving my Spring issue of Modernism, I was happy to find one article concerning John Lautner’s work and another mentioning Michael Lafetra and his architectural acquisitions. Lautner’s Schaffer residence was open for public view on April 6, and I was excited to experience it once again. I first visited La Crescenta Park, a public mountain preserve a few blocks from the residence. The preserve gave me a sense of the original building site with its big leaf canopies of thick oaks. As I arrived at the house, I could see the horizontal redwood fences that become the walls of the home when glass spacers are added to the openings. I found myself returning again and again to the kitchen and living room to “feel” the one great flowing space with just a minimum sense of shelter. It is one of the masterworks of the 1950s. It’s enjoyable to read about a collection of John Lautner’s work. Thanks for the articles.
–Lynn Call, A.I.A., Los Angeles, CA

Regarding the article “Dessau: Bauhaus Legacy,” [Spring 2008] by Patricia Harris and David Lyon, the reader is likely to have the impression that the 1976 restoration of the Bauhaus buildings was limited to the glass walls. Although the present administration of the buildings is loathe to give credit to the former communist German Democratic Republic, the 1976 restoration included the exterior and graphics, interiors, door hardware, lighting fixtures and auditorium seating. In fact, several of the spherical door knobs and their wall receptacles recreated in ’76 have been damaged and not replaced. Given the socialist leanings of the Bauhaus faculty and students, the GDR committed to the costly restoration project to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the original construction and to demonstrate the “socialist” influence of Bauhaus design. The major addition to the buildings after reunification was the interior color scheme, inspired by [De Stijl painter and art theorist] Theo van Doesburg.
–Robert Smith, Fillmore, CA