Postmodern Silver Plated Picture Frame by TsAO & McKown for Swid Powell for Sale

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Postmodern Silver Plated Picture Frame by TsAO & McKown for Swid Powell For Sale

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Postmodern Silver Plated Picture Frame by TsAO & McKown for Swid Powell:
$499.00

A wonderful postmodern silver-plated easel back frame.Designed by TsAO & Mckown for Swid Powell.
Model no. 3311 - entitled the \"Ripple\" frame. Comprising a one-piece, welded easel back frame with a thick beveled-edge rectangular glass panel.Dimensions:Height: 5.25 in (133.35 mm)Width: 3.38 in (85.86 mm)Depth: 2.5 in (63.5 mm)
Style:Modernist
Place of Origin:Italy
Period:Late 20th Century
Date of Manufacture:Late 20th Century
Condition:Good.
Swid Powell was the highly acclaimed New York City-based tableware company founded by Nan Swid and Addie Powell. The two founders had met at Knoll and built a new firm around the idea of an architect-driven line of tableware, re-introducing High Design into utilitarian wares in the 1980s. They collaborated with a long list of high-profile architects and were in business through the end of the 20th Century.
Swid Powell

The New York City–based tableware company Swid Powell produced some of the most distinctive china and silver of the 1980s in collaboration with international architects and designers. It enjoyed renewed attention in 2007, when the Yale University Art Gallery mounted the exhibition “The Architect’s Table: Swid Powell and Postmodern Design,” celebrating the donation to its collection of the company’s papers.

Swid Powell was established in 1982 by Nan Swid and Addie Powell, who met while working at the modernist furniture companyKnoll. Their idea was to translate the aesthetics of postmodern design from the skyscraper to the dining table, and they brought into their preliminary discussions nine prominent architects. Among these were Philip Johnson, Stanley Tigerman and Richard Meier, all of whom expressed enthusiasm about making their designs accessible beyond the small group with the funds to commission buildings from them.

The first Swid Powell collection was launched in 1984, accompanied by a bold, graphic print campaign in keeping with the era’s advertising trends. The company’s best-known collaboration was with Robert Venturi’s Philadelphia-based firm, Venturi, Scott Brown and Associates, whose patterns — particularly the floral designGrandmotherinspired by a tablecloth Venturi saw at the home of a colleague\'s grandmother — adorned Swid Powell porcelain as well as furniture and clothing.

The firm also partnered with architectRichard Meier, whose geometric designs were inspired in part by those of Josef Hoffmann and Charles Rennie Mackintosh. Swid Powell also worked with Arata Isosaki, Ettore Sottsass, Zaha Hadid and George Sowden, creating products that incorporated the bright, saturated colors and popular and historical references, likeClassical columns, that animated postmodern design in the 1980s. TheChicago Bluechina pattern designed for Swid Powell by the firm Gwathmey Siegel references the distinctive patterns of Frank Lloyd Wright’s leaded glass windows. As you will see in the examples below, Swid Powell continued to produce fine, fashionable homewares throughout the decade and beyond.