New Inventory Roundup!

New Inventory Roundup

We’ve gotten a bunch of great new stuff in over the last few weeks, and thought the best way to introduce it to everyone (everyone who hasn’t yet become a fan on Facebook, of course, which is the best way to keep abreast of all the cool stuff that comes through our doors on a practically daily basis) would be to round it all up in one blog post! So, here we go.

Pair of E. Gomme/G-Plan mahogany dressers

Although mid century furniture that was made in England tends to not have quite as good a reputation as true “Danish Modern”, these dressers prove the exception to the rule. G-Plan was the range of modern furniture produced in the 1950s and 60s by E. Gomme Ltd., a UK furniture maker that had been in existence since the 1920s. The gold stamps on these dressers, which bear both the "E. Gomme" and "G-Plan" names, mark these as dating from the early '50s. These dressers have a strong Italian influence, have nice sculptural bases, and high quality construction. Refinished, they will be stunners!

Queen size walnut beds

We have two of these fantastic walnut queen size beds, both complete with headboard, footboard and side rails. We are in the process of refinishing one right now. They have beautiful lines, and remind me of George Nakashima’s production work for Widdicomb.

Pair of high back embossed crocodile leather high back lounge chairs by Oly Design Studio

We don’t usually represent contemporary pieces, but sometimes something falls into our lap that’s too fantastic to refuse – like these amazing wingback chairs by Oly Design Studio, one of the foremost names in high end contemporary furniture. These were consigned to us by a couple who purchased them only a few years ago, but since have remodeled and no longer have a good place for them. They retailed for $3200 each, and are literally good as new for $3750 for the pair!

Swedish Industrial Stool

There’s something about Swedish industrial pieces that make them stand out from a lot of the other industrial stuff we come across. So simple, yet so well designed, this little stool is a marvel. Adjusts from 17”-25.5” by means of a lever. Love it!

Machine Age Leather Task Chair

With its ergonomic seat, leather upholstery, and brass tacks, this little chair has all the style you could as for in a vintage secretary/task chair. Great looking and surprisingly comfortable!

Industrial Steel Canister

I’ve been really getting into industrial small stuff lately (as you can see by some of the new listings!), and this one might be my favorite. It’s just so bold and graphic, the colors really pop!

Cast Iron Serving Tray

Keeping with the “industrial small stuff” theme, this has got to be the most impressive serving tray I’ve ever seen. Measuring an impressive 27” x 15” and weighing nearly 25 lbs, this piece is not for the faint of heart!

Hollywood Regency Gold Gilt Faux Bamboo Coffee Table

Then, on the complete other end of the design spectrum, we have this amazing Hollywood Regency coffee table with a gilded iron base and a ¾” thick glass top. The base combines a bamboo motif with a lotus flower, for that final push over the top! Oddly, this table was made in Mexico (instead of Italy as one might expect), but it’s actually much better made and sturdier than many of the Italian gold gilt pieces I’ve seen over the years, which tend to be rather flimsy.

Pair of Sculptural Walnut Laurel Lamps

We tend not to go out on a limb with lighting – but these were just too good to pass up. Laurel definitely put out some sort of ho-hum designs over the years, but these are definitely not one of them – and in our opinion, are in the class of Laurel’s highly collectable Paul Evans-aping brutalist metal lamps.

Sweet pair of “Waffle Glaze” pottery lamps

I love these! The glaze reminds me of those delicious Dutch “Stroopenwafel” cookies. We refinished the wooden bases and finials to give them a little extra pop.

Industrial metal cabinet with finished interior

This piece ended up being QUITE a project. I purchased it a few months ago on my last trip to Seattle. When I bought it, the interior shelving was crude and primitive, and although usable, was not something I wanted to represent. So, we went all out and had all new shelving made. The shelves are made of furniture-grade birch plywood, and the shelf hangers are solid walnut. The shelves themselves are easily removable, and if you needed a few extra inches of clearance to get a large item in there (such as a TV), the walnut shelf hangers are also removable.

2-Tone Walnut Console Table by American of Martinsville

We've had this little guy kicking around for a long time - and I finally decided that it was time it got refinished, and MAN, what a difference! It's previous existence as a boring brownish table has been banished, and now it's truly a potential center of attention for any room!

Well, that about catches us up - although there are a few other pieces that we are working on currently (such as a cute mahigany draw-leaf dining table that we just finished, an awesome little painted steel industrial cabinet on casters that needs to be cleaned and wet-sanded, and a fab pair of 1960s slipper chairs that need complete restoration) that we haven't even had the chance to photograph yet - so keep tabs on the Facebook page to make sure you don't miss anything!

Solid Wood vs. Veneer

One of the most common questions I get asked on the sales floor of my shop or via internet selling channels is "Is it solid wood?" Usually this is in reference to a dining table or perhaps a sideboard or chest of drawers, and usually the answer is "no, it's a veneer". Evidently, this is usually the WRONG answer, resulting in a downcast look from the in-person customer and a dropping off the face of the earth from the virtual customer.

Just last week, a woman living in NYC emailed to inquire about a specific dining table. After a few emails back and forth, the inevitable question popped up: "Is it solid wood"? I replied "no, it's a veneer". She wrote back "well, we like the look of the table a lot but we're really only looking for tables that are solid wood".

The table in question

Since she had provided me with her phone number, I decided to call her and probe a little bit and see what her her desire for a solid wood table was based on. As I suspected, it turned out that she was under the impression that solid wood tables were somehow "better quality" then their veneered counterparts, and that most pieces made by major Danish designers such as Hans Wegner and Finn Juhl were made from solid wood.

I told her that yes, there is ONE Finn Juhl dining table that I know of that's made from solid teak - however, practically every other mid century dining table that I can think of, even those by big name designers including Juhl and Hans Wegner, are veneered (the glaring exception to this being some 1950s American modern furniture, such as that produced by Heywood Wakefield and designed by Paul McCobb and Russell Wright - but these pieces, although solid wood, were produced from lower cost woods such as maple and birch).

I went on to explain that while solid wood is all very nice in theory, in practice, it really doesn't make that much of a difference when compared to a quality piece of veneered furniture. In fact, if they aren't cared for properly, solid wood tables and case pieces can actually present a problem, in that solid wood is MUCH more prone to warping and cracking than veneered wood. Other than that, the only other real advantage I can think of to solid wood is aesthetic (which, even then, is in the eye of the beholder), and the fact that solid wood pieces are a bit easier to bring back from severe damage than veneered pieces are, since you don't have to worry about sanding through the veneer. However, the process for dealing with severe damage such as a cigarette burn or a deep gouge is exactly the same with a solid wood piece and a veneered piece - you still have to fill the void and color match the fill to the rest of the finish.

So, when dealing with mid century modern furniture, the issue of solid wood vs. veneer is almost a non-issue. Solid wood simply doesn't offer that many advantages, and pieces that are solid wood are not particularly worth more than those of similar quality that are veneered. As I said above, it pretty much boils down to an aesthetic/taste issue more than anything else. By the same token, some people may like teak wood better than walnut, but one is not inherently better or worse than the other.

Having said that, being able to distinguish solid wood furniture from veneered furniture IS a useful skill when looking for vintage furniture for your home, and there are a few simple ways to distinguish between the two (keep in mind that when someone selling a piece of furniture, especially on a venue such as craigslist or eBay, claims that a piece of furniture is solid wood, there's a very good chance that it isn't).

The first (this applies mainly to tables) is the presence of edge banding, as you can see on the detail of a Hans Wegner dining table below:


Edge banding simply serves to cover up the unfinished edge of the piece of veneered wood that comprises the main tabletop. Edge banding can range from as thin as 1/8" up to over 1" in thickness. Thicker edge banding on a table is a definite sign of quality. Even if you didn't know that the table above was designed by Hans Wegner, the fact that it's banded in a 3/4" piece of solid teak would give you a clue to its quality. If a piece of furniture has a bullnose edge like the one on this table, but you can't find any evidence of edge banding, the piece is probably solid wood.

Another very easy way to tell solid wood (once again, mainly for tables) is to look at the underside of the piece - does it look like the same piece of wood as the table top? If not, then it's probably veneered! Veneered tops will usually have a nicer wood on top (such as teak, walnut or rosewood) and a less expensive/less attractive veneer on the bottom.

The third and final way is to look at the edge of the piece of wood and see if the graining on the top carries through on the edge - the way marbling does in a good piece of steak. If this is not the case, you are looking at a veneered piece. Below, you can see the detail of the edge of a solid teak coffee table designed by Finn Juhl to get a visual on what I'm talking about:


While a solid wood piece is not necessarily better or more valuable than a veneered piece of comparable quality, the presence of solid wood in a piece does give you an idea of the quality, even if you don't know anything else about the piece. The fact that a piece is solid wood might also potentially give you a clue that the piece is handmade, or at least custom made, since so few factory made pieces of mid century furniture (apart from the major exceptions, as noted above) were made of solid wood. So, while the presence of solid wood is definitely a tool that you can use to determine the quality of a piece of furniture, it should not be the sole determinant in your search, unless you have very deep pockets and a considerable amount of time on your hands. Likewise, if you unexpectedly find yourself with a piece of solid wood furniture, think of it as a bonus, and a nice selling point if you ever want or need to re-sell the piece!

Even Our Competition Says We're Better

About a month ago, a client came to us with a Knoll sofa that he wanted to have reupholstered and refinished. See the original sofa below.

From this pic, the sofa doesn't look all that bad, but on closer inspection, the fabric was quite worn and shabby, and the frame was pretty beat up as well. We reupholstered the sofa in fabric that the client provided, and refinished the frame back to a natural walnut. As you can see below, it turned out beautifully.

Naturally, the client was quite pleased with the results. When he came to pick it up, I asked him where had gotten the sofa. He told me, and to my surprise, he had purchased it at another shop in Portland that specializes in mid century modern furniture, and who also have their own upholsterer! I said "well, that's odd, I'm surprised that they didn't just reupholster it themselves". He replied that they had planned to redo it, but that he had found it before they had gotten the chance to do it. I replied "well, even so, I'm surprised that they didn't just have their guy reupholster the sofa for you!", to which he said "well, they're the ones who sent me over to you. They said 'go to Janus Home, their guy does better work than ours'".

I have to admit I was a little speechless, but definitely quite flattered. I certainly believe that my upholsterer does better work than just about anyone else in town, but to have it confirmed by my competition was really quite pleasing.

Which is to say - if you have any old pieces (not just mid century, we can work on antiques as well) that you'd like to breathe new life into, bring them on down! We our fully endorsed by our competition!

RIP Vic Chesnutt: 1964-2009

Awhile back, I made the declaration that the Janus Home blog would be "all furniture all the time". At the time, I had the intention of starting up a music blog called The Pop Narcotic. Well, 2 posts and about 6 months later, my music blog sits woefully unattended - truth be told, I can barely get it together to update THIS blog on a regular basis. New year's resolution? "WILL UPDATE BLOG ONCE A WEEK. WILL UPDATE BLOG ONCE A WEEK". So, while the ultimate fate of The Pop Narcotic remains undetermined - hopefully one day when I have more time, I will be able to do something with it - something happened a few days ago that I simply can't not write about.

That something was the death, presumably by suicide, of Vic Chesnutt, a brilliant artist who deserved much wider recognition. While he received consistent critical accolades throughout his career, as is often the case, this did very little to increase his sales or turn him into anything other than a cult hero.

If you don't know anything about Vic Chesnutt, never seen him, never heard his music, you should know that the simultaneously most and least important thing about him is that he was a paraplegic with limited use of his hands and arms, left that way at the age of 18 as the result of a car accident. It is the most important thing because it completely changed his life, gave him tremendous obstacles to overcome, and eventually likely led to his death from an overdose of muscle relaxants. It is the least important thing because it seemed to do very little to dampen the man's spirit, or his ability to write and record amazing songs.

I've been lucky enough to see Vic play twice, and the two performances couldn't have been more different. One show was a good show with a full band behind him, the other was simply one of the most inspiring simultaneous displays of human strength and frailty that I've ever seen in my life. At this show, Vic played accompanied only by his primitively strummed acoustic guitar. It was here that I realized the extent of the man's disability - not only was he in a wheelchair due to being paralyzed from the waist down (which I knew), his upper body was partially paralyzed as well, and he could really barely hold his guitar, let alone play it. Despite that, there he was, on stage at the Crocodile Cafe in Seattle, in front of a room full of adoring fans, playing and singing his heart out. While it was an amazing performance, it was also not easy to watch, as the tension between what the man's mind was capable of creating and what his damaged body was able to produce was palpable.

While that show was hardly one of the BEST performances I've ever seen, it was absolutely one of the most MEMORABLE, and likely one that I'll never forget. Vic's lack of fear in getting up onstage with no backing band, presenting himself exactly as he was with no apologies, could simply be filed under "how to be human". His performance was so raw, so unadorned, so unflinching and unapologetic, that one couldn't help but be completely moved by it, practically to tears. Then there's the whole "man, if this guy can get up there in this condition and play these songs in front of all these people, and do it WELL, I have got NOTHING to complain about" thing.

Vic was an artist who could reliably be counted on to put out a new record, whether it was under his own name or a collaboration with other like-minded artists, every few years. While the quality of those records was somewhat variable (I hadn't picked up his two most recent releases, "North Star Deserter" and "At the Cut", because I was rather underwhelmed with his 2006 effort, "Ghetto Bells" - but I hear they're really good, so I need to rectify that), he could always be counted on to make something interesting, even if it may not have been a career highlight. On the subject of career highlights, I think that anyone who is even remotely interested in the singer-songwriter genre, especially if anyone who has an appreciation for twisted, Southern Gothic storytelling, NEEDS to have both "Is the Actor Happy", from 1995, and "Silver Lake", from 2003, in their collection.

It's been said that Vic had been suicidal on and off for most of his life, and that he had tried it more than once. It's hard to glean that from his music, which, while certainly not always chipper, is uniformly enormously full of life. However, it's got to be damn hard to accept a disability that was brought on purely by one's own poor teenage decision making (the accident that crippled him was a one-car accident that was the result of drunk driving). Given what he was able to accomplish despite the odds stacked against him, Vic Chesnutt was truly an inspirational figure, and his tragic passing leaves us with one less astute commentator on the art of being human.

Read more about the career and albums of Vic Chesnutt here.

The Janus Home Holiday Guide to Dining Tables, Pt. 1

In honor of the impending holiday season, we thought we would take some time to focus on that most important piece of furniture, the dining table. There's a certain je ne sais quoi to a dining table. Part of it is that it's the single piece of furniture that people gather around and eat on. Eating is a big deal, and eating with other people, specifically friends and family, even more so. It's also the centerpiece of a dining room, which sometimes, depending on the layout of the house, can translate into being the centerpiece of the entire house. The point is - dining tables are kind of a big deal - even more so around the holiday season! So, if you're considering thepurchase of a new dining table, there are several things you need to take into account.

• Shape. Most dining tables are either round, oval, square, or rectangular. However, when paired with their extension leaves, round tables can become oval and square tables can become rectangular.
• Versatility. Some dining tables, such as farm-style tables and most tables with glass or stone tops, are fixed and cannot expand or contract. Others, usually made of wood, havevarious different types of expansion mechanisms, which we will discuss below.
• Materials. Wood? Glass? Metal? Stone? Some combination of the above? If wood, what kind of wood?

Perhaps the easiest decision of these to make is shape, as it is largely determined by the shape of your room. In general, rectangular tables are more efficient, space wise, than round or square tables (i.e. you can get more people per square foot around a rectangular table than you can around a round or square table). However, if you have a large square dining room, a big round table might be just the thing you need.

Versatility largely depends on your intended use of the table, and also the space that you have available for the table. Do you have a tiny space, but nevertheless like to entertain and have lots of people over? Then perhaps you would consider a table that breaks down fairly small, but has a number of extension leaves to make it bigger when you are entertaining.

When it comes to leaves, there are several types. You have your basic drop-in extension leaf, where the table pulls apart in the center and one or more leaves simply drop in to make the table bigger. Usually this type of leaf needs to be stored in a closet or somewhere else, although some tables have mechanisms for storing the leaves underneath the table. The advantage to this type of leaf is that sometimes a table like this will have the capacity to get very large, such as the Paul McCobb for Calvin dining set pictured below.

This dining table by Paul McCobb starts out at a very modest 44" round.But, with the addition of 6 12" center extension leaves, the table morphs into a 10' monster, roomy enough to seat 10 comfortably.

Often, a table will actually expand to accept more leaves than actually come with the table - and sometimes leaves get lost, leaving you with a table that will expand to accept leaves, but no actual leaves.

This is a solvable problem, however, because you should be able to find a local carpenter or woodworker who can fashion you a leaf that will fit into the table. Of course, the leaf will probably not match the table exactly, but the fact is that most times when we put leaves in our table to have company over, we put a tablecloth over the table, so the fact that the leaves may not match becomes less of an issue. It's also quite possible to fashion a leaf out of a complementary wood, so that while the leaf may not match, it will contrast nicely with the wood of the table, giving a pleasing aesthetic effect. For instance, just last week, we made a leaf out of poplar wood for a client who purchased a rosewood table from us that had no leaves. The whitish-greenish-yellow of the poplar wood contrasted quite nicely with the purplish brown of the rosewood, and the clients were quite happy!

Another type of leaf that is quote common in mid century tables, especially Danish tables, is the draw leaf. These leaves are stored underneath the main table surface, and pull out from either end of the table by means of runners. This is a very popular design, mainly because it is extremely convenient, as the leaves automatically store right underneath the table. Another advantage of this design is that the leaves are usually very easy to operate, and can be expanded or contracted by one person, making this a smart choice for a single person shopping for a dining table. In contrast, it can sometimes be difficult for one person to pull a table apart to accept a drop-in leaf. Perhaps the only drawback to this type of design is that unlike drop in expansion tables, which can sometimes expand practically to infinity, these tables are limited in the amount which they will expand. However, unless you own a castle and need to seat 24 people comfortably, a large draw-leaf table will usually suffice for the needs of most families. A teak draw-leaf dining table with oak base by Hans Wegner. This view shows the table extended.

A similarly designed teak table by J.L. Moller. The extension leaves fit neatly underneath the main table surface.

One other less common, but still worth mentioning, leaf design is the butterfly leaf. This is a leaf that folds in half and stores under the table, and by means of a mechanical device, pops up when the table is pulled apart. These are very fun, and can be entertaining to your friends and family (especially small children), and also have the advantage of storing underneath the table. The only drawback to this type of leaf is that they are usually limited to a single leaf, so you don't get a whole lot of expansion potential - it is seldom possible to seat more than 8 people at a dining table equipped with a butterfly leaf. A contemporary hand-made Koa wood dining table featuring a butterfly leaf.

However, if you don't plan on entertaining large groups of people, or simply have a small enough space that won't let you open up a big dining table no matter what, a butterfly leaf can be a very viable (not to mention stylish!) option.

Please join us for our next installment, when we will discuss the question of materials. Until then, happy holidays!

The Janus Home Holiday Guide to Dining Tables, Pt. 2.

As always, thanks for reading, and welcome back to part two of our (admittedly belated) Holiday Guide to Dining Tables!

Now that you've decided on shape and size, it's time to discuss materials. The vast majority of mid century dining tables out there are made of wood. There are many different types of wood used in dining table construction, but for mid century tables, you will find mostly teak, walnut, rosewood, oak, maple, and birch. The type of wood you choose will usually revolve around what else you have in your home, and what type of floor you have. Generally, it's best to choose a wood that will contrast with your floor rather than blend into it. So, if you have light oak hardwood floors, it's maybe not the best idea to get a light oak (or birch or maple for that matter) dining table.

Although other woods such as rosewood, oak and walnut do appear with some frequency in Danish modern dining tables, teak is by far and away the most common wood used. In contrast, it is fairly rare to find a vintage teak table that is made in the USA. In lieu of teak, walnut is seen much more commonly in American mid century dining tables, as is birch and maple. The reasoning for this is pretty simple - walnut, birch and maple are all trees that are found very commonly in many parts of the USA, whereas woods like teak and rosewood are "exotics", found only in parts of the world like India and Southeast Asia. Since the majority of the lumber-producing forests in Europe were cut down hundreds of years ago, Danish furniture makers were unable to rely on indigenous woods as were their American counterparts, which is why exotics like teak and rosewood are much more common in European furniture of the era.

Another thing to keep in mind when considering a wooden dining table is the possibility of having it refinished to a different color. This mainly applies to lighter woods such as birch and maple, which can be stained or lacquered practically any shade or any color you want. While it's not as common to do this to darker woods such as walnut, rosewood and teak, it is possible. It's just that more often than not, these woods have very attractive grain patterns that you wouldn't want to hide under coats of dark stain. In contrast, most lighter woods don't have very exciting grain patterns, so it's no major crime to stain them very dark to achieve a more dramatic effect. A good example of this is the Paul McCobb Planner Group dining table that we refinished and sold awhile back.This table is a great looking, extremely functional table with its combination of drop leaves and center extension leaves. However, the maple wood in its natural state was just a little plain. The ebony stain that we applied to it gave the table a fantastic presence, and made it look just that much more elegant as well.

When choosing a material for your dining table, the most important thing to consider is the other pieces in your home. If you have hardwood floors, a wooden credenza and a wooden china cabinet, you might want to consider a metal and glass table to break up all the wood. Likewise, if you have an extremely clean, modern interior with lots of chrome and leather and polished concrete floors, you might think about a wooden dining set to warm things up a bit.
In the end, if versatility is an issue (the ability to have your table go from small to large), you are most likely going to be stuck with a wooden table. Although expandable glass tables do exist,
they are much less common than their wooden counterparts.

The glass and steel dining table shown below offers a very specific look, and also needs a very large room to live in, measuring in at around 7' x 4'. Although quite attractive, it offers little in the way of versatility.


When putting a room together, perhaps the worst thing you can do is to have everything match. Our brains thrive on contrast and how things play off of each other, and if everything in a room matches perfectly, well, there's no contrast and nothing plays off anything else, and the end result is BO-RING. That's not to say that if you have the opportunity to purchase a matching dining set of table, chairs and sideboard, that you shouldn't do it. If you find such a set that meets your needs - by all means, go for it. However, there's no need to get hung up on whether or not the chairs you buy to go with your table "originally" went with the table. It's also worth noting that many vintage furniture dealers have the rather annoying habit of "marrying" a dining table and set of chairs that don't really go together, trying to sell them as a set, and refusing to "break up the set" when it is pointed out that the table and chairs don't actually even belong together. Which is to say, even if you think you're getting an original set, it may not always be the case.

Of course, you don't want to go overboard and have every piece contrasting wildly with every other piece - that'll just give you a headache. What we're looking for here is a happy medium. Strive to bring different elements together so that they complement each other instead of clash with each other. Keep in mind that materials are only part of the picture - you can draw a room together using pieces made from different materials so long as they all possess a complementary line.

Having said that, the first rule of Interior Design (at least in our book) is that THERE ARE NO RULES! If you play strictly by the "rules", you might never put together this modern industrial dining table with these black lacquered antique French chairs. And that would be a shame!

Happy Holidays!

Zanini de Zanine Caldas at NOHO Modern, 10/23/09

Last weekend I had the privilege to attend and help out with the setting up of a truly monumental exhibition of the work of a young Brazilian furniture designer and sculptor, Zanini de Zanine Caldas. My close friend Thomas Hayes, owner of the NOHO Modern gallery, along with Zanini, has been working on this exhibition for over two years. It was a truly special experience to contribute, even in a small way, to the success of this show, and to see years of hard work, impeccable craftsmanship, and seemingly insurmountable logistical difficulties finally come to fruition.

Zanini strolling past his Ipe wood hanging bookshelf, the night before the opening.

The work of Zanini is unlike anything I have ever seen. Although he draws considerable inspiration from the work of his father, renowned Brazilian architect and furniture designer Jose Zanine Caldas, Zanini remains true to his quest to be his own man and his own artist, all the while carrying on the considerable legacy of his father, who passed away in 2001 at the age of 82.
Like his father, Zanini works exclusively with salvaged wood, either from trees that have naturally fallen in the Brazilian rain forest, or from houses (sometimes built by his father) that are being torn down or remodeled. Most of his work is done in one of three exotic Brazilian hardwoods - Ipe, Macaranduba or Pequi wood, all of which are some of the most dense, heavy woods on Earth.

The weight of the wood is such that Sofa Curva (pictured above), crafted from a single salvaged Ipe wood beam, weighs over 1 ton, and can only be moved with a forklift.

The simple Ipe wood "deck chairs" (pictured above, with Zanini balanced on top), crafted from a deck that was being torn off a house built by his father, weigh about 75 lbs each.

However, having said that, there is much more to Zanini's work than simple mass. Taking inspiration from his father's body of work, but never outright recreating or copying his designs (which would be impossible, anyway, because each of his father's furniture designs were one of a kind, and created with each specific piece of wood in mind), Zanini's designs are incredibly simple, yet almost mind-bogglingly complex when the work and skill required to tame these incredibly difficult materials is taken into account.

Dining table of Ipe wood and glass. This table, priced at $35,000, was considered by many to be the star of the show.

Zanini was literally raised by his father to be a furniture designer, which has created a certain. Here I would like to quote Thomas' essay in the exhibition catalog: "(Zanini) has such profound respect for his father and his work that his every decision in designing is aimed at two goals. The first is to respect the standards his father set about how to do things with the highest level of mastery, and the second is to create pieces markedly different from his father's work; pieces that could never be confused with them". In these goals, Zanini has also succeeded admirably - one would be hard pressed to confuse Zanini's Inclinida Aperador credenza (pictured below, with Zanini standing atop), or, for that matter, one of his simple, geometric wall sculptures, for the work of his father. At the same time, the lineage and inspiration is obvious.

The same credenza, the night before the show, with wall sculptures scattered on the floor before being hung

The list of sons who have never been able to break out of the shadow of their famous fathers is long and tedious (wherefore art thou, Julian Lennon?), whereas the list of sons of famous fathers who have been able to not only carve out their own space in the same niche occupied by their fathers, but actually thrive in that niche, is much more succinct (continuing on the music analogy, I can only think of one example off the top of my head - Rufus Wainwright - although I'm sure there are others that I'm forgetting about). With this exhibition, Zanini places himself squarely in the latter category. His is a body of work that will ripen with age, along with his worldwide reputation. Although he has already made a bit of a name for himself in his native Brazil, the NOHO exhibition is Zanini's first US show of any size. Considering the sheer quality and singularity of the work, there is no question in my mind that there will be many more to follow.

Zanini de Zanine is showing at NOHO Modern Gallery, 6162 Santa Monica Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90038, now through December 31, 2009.
NOHO Modern on 1stdibs.com
http://www.nohomodern.com

The gallery on opening night.

NOHO Modern gallery owner Thomas Hayes posing with Zanini on opening night.