Celebrating Studio Craft

For four decades, the name of George Nakashima (1905–1990), the visionary furniture designer-maker who turned from architecture to woodworking, has been linked with a visionary showplace in Philadelphia: Moderne Gallery.

Moderne, located in an arts district in the city’s riverfront Port Richmond neighborhood, has the largest Nakashima collection in the world. It’s the definitive place for seeing and buying the artist’s signature conoid chairs, live-edge tables, and other works of wood mastery. Through exhibitions and influence, the gallery has been instrumental in advancing Nakashima’s reputation to its current stratospheric heights, as well as in preserving and furthering the legacy of other pioneers of the studio craft movement. And it all started with a phone call.

Robert Aibel was a professor of film at Philly’s Drexel University whose interest in craft had led him to collect Americana. On a trip to Paris to interview filmmakers, though, he sought out art deco furniture for his deco-influenced new house back home. “I had a little inherited money,” he says, “and I bought too many pieces! But I thought, I love this; I think I’ll start a gallery.”

An important motive for ex-professor Aibel was educating the public about studio craft artists, many of whom had slipped into obscurity or semi-obscurity—he cites the 1985 caller, who considered his Nakashima pieces mere “used furniture.” His initial Nakashima show was soon followed by the first Esherick show anywhere since 1959.

Moderne’s treasure trove of historical studio craft pieces grew as “owners of studio pieces sought a gallery to whom they could sell them,” Aibel says. “Since very few galleries specialized in studio work, and few still do, our reputation grew.”

Vintage pieces by Wendell Castle, Arthur Espenet Carpenter, Sam Maloof, David Ebner, Peter Voulkos, Toshiko Takaezu, Viola Frey, Edward Moulthrop, William Hunter, and many other legendary makers joined the Moderne roster.

Aibel brought his son, Joshua, into the gallery as codirector in 2010. As Robert tells it, this was Joshua’s idea. “I never said, Hey, Josh, you should come into the business with your dad. It was his passion, his interest.” Joshua’s passion for contemporary work helped turn what had been mainly a showcase for vintage furniture into a forward-looking art and design gallery, with an enhanced emphasis on ceramics, which Robert had been collecting since the gallery’s early days.

“Working art fairs as a kid was my entry into the gallery’s world,” says Joshua. “I saw underrepresented contemporary woodworkers and ceramicists and I felt it was important for Moderne not only to represent the historical, but to follow the studio craft movement to where it is today.”

Jon Spayde is a contributing editor to American Craft.