Shiro Kuramata - Design Masters New York Tuesday, December 13, 2011 | Phillips

Create your first list.

Select an existing list or create a new list to share and manage lots you follow.

  • Provenance

    Tachibana restaurant, Shinagawa, Tokyo

  • Literature

    Japanese Restaurants & Taverns: 51 Outstanding Japanese Specialty Dish Restaurants& Taverns, Volume III, Japan, 1996, front cover and pp. 176–180; Shiro Kuramata 1934–1991, exh. cat., Hara Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo, 1996, p. 198 for a mention of the commission

  • Catalogue Essay

    Tachibana is a Japanese variety of sweet wild orange.

    Phillips de Pury & Company wish to thank Mieko Kuramata in cataloguing this lot.

  • Artist Biography

    Shiro Kuramata

    Japanese • 1934 - 1991

    Shiro Kuramata is widely admired for his ability to free his designs from gravity and use materials in ways that defied convention. After a restless childhood, his ideas of being an illustrator having been discouraged, Kuramata discovered design during his time at the Teikoku Kizai Furniture Factory in Arakawa-ku in 1954. The next year he started formal training at the Department of Interior Design at the Kuwasawa Design Institute. His early work centered on commercial interiors and window displays. In 1965, at the age of 31, he opened his own firm: Kuramata Design Office.

    Throughout his career he found inspiration in many places, including the work of Italian designers (particularly those embodying the Memphis style) and American conceptual artists like Donald Judd, and combined such inspirations with his own ingenuity and creativity. His dynamic use of materials, particularly those that were transparent, combination of surfaces and awareness of the potential of light in design led him to create objects that stretched structural boundaries and were also visually captivating. These qualities are embodied in his famous Glass Chair (1976).

    View More Works

48

Unique table, from the Tachibana restaurant, Shinagawa, Tokyo

1991
Acrylic.
40 1/2 × 157 1/2 × 23 5/8 in. (103 × 400 × 60 cm.)
Together with a certificate of authenticity from Mieko Kuramata.

Estimate
$80,000 - 120,000 

Sold for $80,500

Design Masters

13 December 2011
New York