Wendell Castle, one of America’s most important contemporary furniture makers, has had several distinct stylistic phases in his career. At first he employed both exotic and native American woods to produce furniture characterized by biomorphic forms and attenuated surrealism. By the 1960s, he had begun experimenting with plastic and fiberglass to create seamless organic designs. In the 1980s, he became fascinated with Post-Modernism and produced highly architectural, polychromatic designs. In 2007 he received the Brooklyn Museum/Modernism Lifetime Achievement Award. The Nirvana chair was a gift of the artist in acknowledgment of the Museum’s ongoing commitment to his work.

This cabinet exemplifies the work of Droog, an informal confederation of Dutch designers founded by Gijs Bakker, a product designer, and Renny Ramakers, an art historian. It consists of recycled drawer fronts inserted in newly constructed wooden boxes held together by a commercial cinch strap. Witty yet functional, it may seem to be merely a mélange of used and new furniture parts, but in fact it is a well-considered composition, balanced in both shape and color. The customer is invited to rearrange the parts at will. Droog’s dramatic and sometimes heretical approach challenges accepted ideas of decorum in design and materials.

The Spacelander is a marvel of postwar biomorphic design. Its curving lines and amoeba-like voids represent the mutation of the prewar streamlined style into a new expression based on organic, rather than machine-made, forms. Although the prototype—made for a 1946 exhibition of British industrial design—was a critical success, Benjamin Bowden failed in his attempts to have it manufactured. By the time it finally went into production in the United States in 1960, tastes had changed and the price of the bicycle—$89.50—was too high. It is believed that only about five hundred examples were ever sold, making it one of the rarest and most sought-after industrial designs of the mid-twentieth century. When new, this bicycle was bright red; the color has faded over time.