Displaying items by tag: shaker furniture

The Shaker Museum|Mount Lebanon opened its main season exhibition, Side By Side: Shaker and Modern Design, to the public on Sunday, June 28. The exhibition, which pairs Shaker works with works by contemporary and modern designers, will be on view during the museum’s hours, 10AM-4PM every Friday-Monday through October 12.

Shaker furniture has been has been widely influential to modern furniture designers. This exhibition examines the idea of modernism and its connection to ideals of utopian social reform through the lens of Shaker and modern furnishings, with works by iconic designers such as Jens Risom, Børge Mogensen, George Nakashima, and Wharton Esherick shown alongside Shaker works from the nineteenth century.

The Shaker Museum│Mount Lebanon will be featured in a new book, "Shaker: Function, Purity, Perfection," to accompany an all-Shaker exhibit at the prestigious European Fine Art Fair in Maastricht, The Netherlands in March. The exhibit is being organized by art dealer Philippe Ségalot and Paris furniture dealer François Laffanour. The accompanying book will be published this month by Assouline Publishing.

Mr. Ségalot spearheaded the project. Celebrated for his work in contemporary art, he first became interested in Shaker design and began collecting Shaker objects eight years ago. He approached the Museum earlier this year about borrowing collection items to add to the privately-owned objects to be exhibited at the Maastricht Fair, which runs from March 13 to 22, 2015, and enlisted the Museum’s help in producing the new companion book on Shaker furniture.

Philippe Ségalot, the French-born, New York-based contemporary-art dealer, has never been good at standing still. Nor has he ever been predictable.

While he continues to deal with the art of our time, he has had a secret obsession: Shaker furniture. Now he plans to capitalize on the synergy between the design and art. It all started eight years ago, after a visit to the Hancock Shaker Village in Pittsfield, Mass. “It blew my mind,” Mr. Ségalot said. “I fell in love with the minimal aesthetic.” He started studying everything he could about the Shaker communities and their furniture, quietly amassing the best examples he could find of Shaker design.