Wendell Castle

Wendell Castle

designer

  • Birth: 6. November 1932, Emporia, Kansas, Vereinigte Staaten
  • Died:  20. Januar 2018, Scottsville, New York, Vereinigte Staaten
  • Nationality: USA

He was an American furniture designer and a leading artisan, who lived in Rochester, New York. In 1980 he founded the Wendell Castle School in Scottsville, New York. Castle has received several awards, including the 1994 “Visionary of the American Crafts Movement” award from the American Crafts Museum.

Video segment from Woodworking Legends – An Interview with Wendell Castle, the father of the art furniture movement, has been a sculptor, designer and educator for more than four decades. He is known for whimsical, organic furniture pieces that are a favourite with museums and collectors, and that continue to inspire other artists and designers. Castle has reinvented himself numerous times, working in a number of styles including Scandinavian, Art Deco and trompe l’oeil, and his fibreglass pieces from the 1960s and ’70s are enduring and important representations of craft furniture. Join us for an enlightening and entertaining conversation on his life’s work with Castle and American furniture historian and author Oscar Fitzgerald.
Crescent Rocker by Wendell Castle in Rare Zebra Wood
Crescent Rocker by Wendell Castle in Rare Zebra Wood, on 1stdibs

In 1959, when he was still a student at the University of Kansas, Castle challenged the age-old division between furniture and art with his professors by showing a piece titled “chair sculpture” to the jury in an art exhibition. This episode foreshadowed the ensuing half-century of his work, in which Castle defied categorization and traditional furniture-making techniques. In this way, he awakened an entire generation of designers and inspired the American studio furniture movement, in which conception and aesthetics are judged to be as important to the success of a piece of furniture as its functionality.

Wendell Castle Original and Replica Products