MODERN TIMES

CA Boom
Prefab design enthusiasts, architects, interior designers, lifestyle experts and artists descended upon Santa Monica, California, last March for the fifth year of the CA Boom design trade show. The city airport’s Barker Hangar accommodated 130 exhibitors and about 7,000 buyers during the three-day fair.

The show was founded as a platform for young designers and many were on hand, including GO.LO.GOR.SKY.STUDIO and the retailer Mogul making their first trade show appearances. Twentieth gallery showcased Tom Dixon’s high-back chairs and lighting fixtures and Bottega Montana displayed exquisitely handcrafted tables, stools and bowls. Many festival favorites were back, including Fleetwood doors, Neo-Metro bath fixtures, Nana Wall Systems, PIE eco-friendly furniture and Modern Shed prefabs, as well as Herman Miller. CA Boom is increasingly attracting international manufacturers, such as Scavolini, Magis, Lafer, Liebherr and Rocio Romero. A modern parenting section offered kids’ design with a twist, such as a day-glow orange crib, and epOxyGreen provided a sneak peak of its sustainable design for the Fred Segal clothing store in Santa Monica.

Events included a book signing for Dream Homes Los Angeles (Panache) by photographer Julius Shulman; home tours in Venice, Santa Monica, Pacific Palisades and West L.A.; and a round table discussion on prefab design.

CA Boom is branching out this fall to the High Point show in North Carolina. For information about CA Boom, visit www.caboomshow.com.
— Carole Dixon


Phillip Lloyd Powell, 1919–2008
Phillip Lloyd Powell, who designed and handcrafted some of the mid-century era’s most idiosyncratic and elegant wooden furniture, died in New Hope, Pennsylvania, on March 9.

Self-taught, Powell began making furniture while in his teens. He attended the Drexel Institute of Technology with plans to become an engineer, but was drafted into the army, cutting his studies short; he often described himself as “the longest-serving draftee,” having served from 1940 to 1946. By the end of World War II, he found that his professional priorities had shifted, and he settled in New Hope, then, as now, a haven for artists and artisans, building a house with his own hands.

After an attempt to support himself by becoming a dealer of modernist furniture and lamps, he took up woodworking in earnest after meeting master woodworker George Nakashima at the New Hope swimming pool. Powell, whose designs possess a gentle, graceful biomorphism, was far from prolific. His perfectionism was legendary, as was his focus on craft. Other designers and woodworkers aspired to form companies that could mass-produce their work; Powell was determined to keep his business as small as possible. From the mid 1950s to the mid 1960s, he shared studio space and business interests with Paul Evans, who worked in metal, but he resumed a solo career when the partnership with Evans began to focus more on business and less on craft.

According to his friend, 20th-century furniture expert John Sollo, money never meant much to Powell, except as a means to his main avocation, travel. “Phil traveled more than anyone I knew who didn’t do it for a living,” comments Sollo. Just before his death, Powell had returned from a long trip to India; Italy was another favorite destination.

Powell’s work became desirable to the knowing early on; the Museum of Contemporary Crafts (now the Museum of Arts and Design) in New York showed his work for the first time in 1957. He exhibited, together with Evans, at America House in New York in 1961. He was in demand for corporate commissions, like his designs for the headquarters of Lenox China, and celebrities like puppeteer Shari Lewis and playwright Paddy Chayevsky collected his furniture.

Powell’s designs made exquisite, glowing use of fine woods, but he also included other materials like stone, as well as “found” elements that he picked up during his trips abroad, like wood turnings from Sicilian donkey carts and deer antlers. He sometimes added luxurious touches, like silver-leaf in cabinets.

In 1991, a sale at David Rago Auctions helped to solidify Powell’s position as a collectible designer of the mid-century period. In recent years, his work has become increasingly sought-after and highly valued; a walnut fireplace surround recently sold for $80,000 and his New Hope chair routinely auctions for $5,000 to $7,500.– SM