Vladimir Kagan's Blog

ELENA KAGAN AND ME

Copyright Vladimir Kagan 2010

 

I have become a pretty important fellow these days. My name is splashed on the headlines of all the newspapers, magazines, and TV talk shows…KAGAN… Never mind that it’s NOT Elena. (Elena Kagan is nominee for the US Supreme Court) Still, it must be rubbing off. (I have just received a clipping that one of my 1955 Sofas sold at a Wright Auction for double it’s estimated price….unfortunately, I won’t see a penny of it!... Never mind, as long as they spell my name correctly. Another recent quote was from John Dempsey President of Estee Lauder:

 

"This is the best design building in New York. It's better than the D&D Building. They have everything here. Vladimir Kagan is here!"

Having achieved this latent fame, I am trying to find a genealogical path to this wonderful namesake of mine. I have done my due diligence and found that she is not my daughter. Comparing photographs of her and my children, there is little resemblance…mine have bigger noses. She does have an endearing Kagan smile…that will go a long way toward claiming her as a relative. Now let’s look at other similarities: We both grew up on the upper West side; she on West End Avenue and I on Riverside Drive. Our parents were both Russian immigrants (though my mother was German). Heated intellectual discussions and liberalism flows in both of our veins. She went to Harvard Law; I went to Columbia Architecture in night classes. Elena was a powerhouse on the Harvard Law Review; I was a major player in the Columbia Ski Club. My daughter Vanessa followed the family tradition and graduated from Barnard (Columbia’s sister school). 

While I enjoyed a liberal upbringing, I voted Republican most of my life…even for Ross Perot but jumped ship for Obama. (I could not See Sarah Palin as my next Vice President.) However, I think that she is cute and wouldn’t mind going fishing with her (I don’t like guns so I would not be good on the Moose Hunt.) 

But to protect my “cousin’s” reputation, I will not express any political views in this article. My Lips are sealed – the word is “mum”.

“While the flavor lasts” (where is that quote from?) I hope to seriously cash in on my fame and will double my prices for my furniture! However, before I have the new price list printed, go to my Website and start ordering at the old price!!!

I am really writing this Blog to come to the attention of my illustrious namesake and hope to be invited to her swearing-in.

 

The Kagan Children, Illya, Jessica, and Vanessa

Elena Kagan, not my daughter!

A VISIT TO THE NORTH BENNET STREET SCHOOL

Copyright Vladimir Kagan 2010

 

I have visited many schools specializing in furniture design with cabinet-making shops as an integral part of their facilities. But until you have visited the North Bennet School in Boston, “you aint seen nothing yet!” North Bennet is in a class by itself. It was founded back in the late 19^th Century by well-intentioned patrician Bostonians to teach vocational skills to the newly arrived immigrants. It still exists in its original buildings, located in a quaint Italian neighborhood of Boston known as the North End. If you try to get there in a full-size car or SUV (as we did)--- look out! The streets are narrow and treacherous, better suited for a horse and buggy and pushcarts than modern transportation. The sidewalks are swarming with people overflowing into the narrow streets. Turning each corner, you are met with the mouthwatering aromas of Italian cooking from the myriad storefront restaurants on every block. 

 

   

North Bennet School today

    

Erica and Vladimir Kagan with Claire Fruitman, Associate Director of the School and graduate furniture maker.

 The school has remained in a hundred year time warp. What sets North Bennet’s furniture program apart from any other school is its faithful commitment to 18^th century esthetics and methodology. There are no computer generated designs or technology. Students learn drafting on paper using drawing boards, T Squares and calipers. The designs are meticulously mounted on spring-loaded window shade that neatly rolls away over their workbenches. Students develop their designs from graceful 18^th Century tables, cabinets and chairs. After progressing through Fundamentals and Drafting, their first year’s project is designing and building their own tool chest that will accompany them throughout the their two year course. They learn to create bombayed drawers and doors, woodturning, marquetry veneering and hand finishing. Their finished works are masterpieces of cabinetry of museum quality. 

 

Drafting at NBSS furniture class

 

Student's first work project: A tool Box

Student building a chair in furniture making class

   

Museum quality chair by graduate student

 
   

  

 

 

Surprisingly, the student body is not your usual entry-lever student. Most have had previous careers ranging from doctors, lawyers, even a retired FBI agent. School-wide, the average age is 32! They work diligently with intense concentration and satisfaction in their end products. If you are interested in modern…better go else where…but If you want to truly learn how to make a piece of furniture, there is no place like North Bennet.

 

What sets North Bennet apart from any other school is it’s amazing curriculum and teaching staff: most are graduates of the school and have come home to roost. Besides furniture making you can become a violinmaker….but you must also learn to play the violin in order to appreciate the instrument. Upon graduation you will have completed six violins, a viola and a cello to the exacting measurements of a Stradivarius. Contrary to naive beliefs, a violin is not made of bent steamed wood, it is carved out of a solid block of exquisite lumber (Fiddle-back European Maple). Students carve for weeks shaping the back alone, sometimes using a tool no larger than your thumbnail, appropriately named a Finger plane.

Student working with Finger Plane to carve back of a violin

 

Vladimir holding his souvenir Finger Plane (This one is three sizes larger than the smallest plane!)

 

 

More interested in pianos? There is an excellent two-year program that teaches restoration, stringing and tuning a piano. Students work on real projects, sent to the school for rebuilding and repairs…sorry, no uprights. Mercifully, for this course, you need not be a pianist, (though it may help). A good ear is primarily what is needed. Once students hit the road, their skills are much in demand for piano tuning and restoration work.

 

An exquisite course is bookbinding. Pupils learn this trade from the ground up: hand-stitching signatures of elegant paper, hand-tooling leather, gilding, embossing, watermarking, marbling the end papers. The completed books are tactile works of art. Jobs await the pupils in libraries and museum restorations.

 

Student tooling and gilding a leather bound book
 

 

Interest in real jewelry…not the costume variety? You can learn fabrication, casting, precious stone settings, working in gold and platinum. Pupil’s finished designs can fit into the windows of Cartier, Tiffany and the finest jewelry stores in your neighborhood. 

   

Student working on a Jewelry project

 Carpentry will teach you how to build a house from the foundation up and the two-year Preservation Carpentry program will teach you how to work on and preserve older buildings.

 

An odd, but practical course is lock-smithing. One academic year will expose you to everything from the simplest door locks to the most sophisticated safety locks and bank vaults. Pupils learn to open your mother’s front door when she has forgotten her keys to fancy safes when the combination has been forgotten or lost. Due to its sensitive nature, it is the only course that pupils have to be vetted. Ex-felons need not apply, though they get frequent inquiries from prisoners to take the course! Jobs are plentiful from your neighborhood ABC Lock Smith to sophisticated institutional jobs.

 

Bored with Wall Street or slugging at a desk 9 to 5? Want a rewarding new career?....Look into North Bennet.

 

For information contact: [email protected]

 

 

MEMORIAL DAY ON NANTUCKET
Copyright Vladimir Kagan 2010

In the lower fifties….there is hardly a community that goes into a deeper sleep than Nantucket. Yeah, there is North and South Dakota and perhaps Garrison Keeler’s Lake Woebegone, but Nantucket surely ranks high amongst them. Nantucket is an island 30 miles out at sea without an umbilical cord connecting it to the mainland and thereby hangs the tale.….Most restaurants close, The Movie theater has been shut and torn down for the last three years (the island’s benefactors promise to have it rebuilt and reopened by next summer. No one is holding their breath.) The population shrinks from 70,000 down to 7,000 (don’t challenge my statistics…they may off by a few thousand in either direction.) Plane and ferry service is often disrupted for days and weeks due to our famous Nor’ Easters. The people remaining on island: Bond. The oldsters like us party in each other’s homes; the more energetic visit the bars (in good old England, they are referred to as the Pub). Wine supplies dwindle, so the local merchants have devised a clever way to restock: A Wine Festival in May! This gives a jolt to the Islanders as they stir out of their winter sleep. Carpenters, plumbers and caretakers should be busy getting summerhouses up to snuff. Instead they are stretching their muscles from the winter slumber.

There is one early wakeup call on the last weekend in April: Daffodil Day. This can be a blustery weekend with rain or snow but more often than not, it’s sunny, warmish and the first signs of spring with thousands of daffodils lining the roads from town to ‘Sconset. It is celebrated with a fun antique car rally where every car is decorated to the hilt with daffodils and people dress-up in wacky costumes. It’s fun for all the islanders as they emerge out of their winter slumber. By Monday, visiting cars have left and the island returns to its early spring doze. ….Nothing happens until Memorial Day.

This the weekend that Nantucket really stirs to life. The ferries are crammed full of teenaged boppers in their mini-hot pants and smoothly combed hair, followed by gangly boys strutting behind them. Then there is the first influx of summer residents returning to their closed houses only to find plumbing not working, winter resident mice having left their trail in the most unlikely places, fuel and gas tanks near to or on empty, car batteries run down, lawns un-mowed and the ravages of winter storms left all over the back yard. Welcome to Spring!

What stirs us to life is the constant whir of lawn mowers, leaf blowers and hedge cutters doing their furious best to catch up with what might have been accomplished the week before.

Then there is our ritual first visit to the most exclusive club on Nantucket: The Wharf-Rats, buried in a little fishing shack on Old North Wharf. There is a salubrious history to this club; I will only give you a brief glimpse. This club is unique because it’s not in any way affected by money, race, religion, status or age. All you spend when you attend is time.

You sit, stand, listen, speak or remain silent. A group of salty waterfront characters “shooting the breeze”.

The sounds are the seagulls, the ferries’ horn and the lapping of waves against the deck. Peaceful yet stimulating, its part of the intimate, endearing wave of Nantucket life.

You cannot apply for membership; you can only aspire to it. There is no membership committee, there are no dues, all are welcome – by introduction only – few get to be members. (We are not yet there), but with my charming wife running interference, we hope to achieve it before our final days. Former Commodores of our elite Nantucket Yacht Club, fly the Wharf-rats burgee on their flag poles and proudly wear their worn (the more faded the better) baseball cap. Membership consists in part of a retired admiral, the airport commissioner, a plumber ----, a retired taxi driver, a bank president, nurses, secretaries, unemployed artists, doctors….there is no criteria for membership. The only qualification is that you must be interesting and have good stories to contribute to the morning’s jabber sessions on the pier overlooking the harbor. The political consensus is conservative. If you are a liberal, it is best concealed…unless you can make a good case, then that’s all the better. They celebrate all Holiday’s with great gusto: Fourth of July by shooting off round after round of blanks on their ship’s cannon. Memorial Day is celebrated with a solemn remembrance and blowing off their latest toy: a ship’s whistle liberated from a World War 1 German Submarine, made of all things, in Boston.

…And then there is the Figawi…a wild and wooly race from Hyannis to Nantucket with a one-day layover in town to raise hell on the Island and return to Hyannis. It was Senator Ted Kennedy’s favorite sail: last year was his last one, months before he died. The weather is usually foul, common for that time of year. This year’s race was no exception with winds of 25 knots on the nose! However this year the sun was shining, but in years past there have been rain, fog and downright cold. The race has gotten dignity over the years and few can remember how it begot its name. A play on words: the often asked question on board, peering through the pea-soup fog, “Where the f—k are we?” Meanwhile, the celebration in town is frantic: restaurants filled to the brim, stores crowded, streets become a menace to navigate by car. Cyclists and frightening moppets everywhere, beach parties, boomer speakers in cars cruising the streets, motorcyclists revving up their Harleys with an intimidating vroom!...You get the picture: Spring is sprung.

In Nantucket, no Mem-day is complete without the Kaufman’s annual cookout. Peggy and Winkie manage the weather just right and while the night before it looked as though it would pour with rain, the weather cooperated and made for a grand afternoon. Everyone you’ll probably not see at the Yacht Club’s opening in three weeks, was there to partake of their al fresco feast…(give or take, one hundred thirty of their closest friends.)

Oh yes, and there is the Memorial Day Parade, except this year there wasn’t one!....Not enough war Veterans left to march!

ICFF COMES AND GOES

Last week was the designer's week to howl. ICFF (International Contemporary Furnishing Fair) is a big happening in New York. Seems like designers and architects from around the nation converge on the city to celebrate design. That's a good thing. If Fashion has its day in the sun why not design! Showrooms, boutiques and stores gussy up and scramble to get a piece of the pie. Parties everywhere and every day. In years past, I reveled in the party scene…today I rejoice when I don't have to go.

ICFF kicks off with a pretentious reception at MOMA. Like birds in a breeding frenzy, everyone claims their own spot in the Sculpture Garden… has highly intellectual conversions and feel as though they have drunk from the grail. It was also opening night for a tiny designer event drummed up by a group of young Turks: Twenty designers were invited to decorate a Munny Doll….including me. (Do you know what a Munny Doll is? I didn't, but my 10-year-old granddaughter did!) It was well hyped (unless you hadn't hear about it) and a very noisy kickoff party 9 PM  - 2 AM, given in a subterranean corner of the hip Ace Hotel. I graciously begged out but saw the show at an earlier time. The “kids” involved worked diligently with enormous energy and creatively to make a mountain out of a molehill. All the dolls were sold on E-Bay and hopefully covered their expenses. 

 

Munny from Front

 

Munny from Back

As I ducked out off all (safe one) off-premises events, I can only report on ICFF. I did attend; Ralph Pucci's must see and be seen party in his spectacular gallery at 44 West 18 Street. A mob scene with sparkling water and cheap white wine…but a must on everyone's agenda. My furniture was relegated to a serene exhibit on the 9th floor….(last year was my turn in the Penthouse). If you haven't seen my limited edition Fiberglas chairs and four sculptures, (commissioned by Ralph), I urge you to do so.

The show has shrunk exponentially from its heyday, when it took up three large halls. Today they couldn't fill the Main hall. But that is a sign of our times. The economy, my friends, is still in the gutter no matter what slogans Washington dreams up.

The content of the show felt at times, like a Bed & Bath Show, with many major plumbing suppliers taking up huge space. The national exhibits like Spain's probably rescued the entrepreneurs of the show, taking up a huge portion of real estate… (Though Italy was conspicuously missing).

Erica and I tootled around on rented electric vehicles. We were a menace…playing doge-ems between the crowd. 

What is always really fun is to discover are the small 5' x 10' off-the-main-street exhibits by artisans for whom this show is a window to the world. 

My old friend, Jacob Marks was there with a fresh collection of handmade furniture and some cute saddle leather covered stools and cleverly carved cork bowls. 

 

 

SKRAM Stool and Cork Bowls
 

We enjoyed meeting a 'ballsie” cabinet maker, Tim Byrne, from the hinterlands of Connecticut and originally from Ireland, who came up with a series of spectacular tables built from salvaged industrial machinery with working gears, tilts and other paraphernalia…. beautiful wood tops and very pricey. (If he sold one…he was home free.) 

   Tim Byrne Tables

Probably the furthest away exhibitors came from Latvia. They brought with them some very funky furniture….liberated “Bombay chests” carved bookcases and some outrageous interiors executed for the superrich oligarchy of Russia. If they were fishing for those client's at ICFF, the pickings would be rather slim.

A group of adorable young artisans from San Salvador had a refreshing exhibit of their work: functional, colorful and minimalist chairs, tables and lamps. 

 
 

LED lighting was much in evidence…but little original appeared on the scene. Chris Pohlmann came up with a 10' tall version of his aluminum branch lights (I commissioned one for our Nantucket house several years ago) this one was quite spectacular. 

 

Of the veteran exhibitors at the show, Richard Shultz introduced a refreshing collection of laser-cut steel furniture in bright yellow and red…. 

 

 

Even I had my foot in the door with the reintroduction of my 1958 CAPRICORN COLLECTION of wire furniture, at the Oasiq exhibit. (Their new, architecturally exciting, showroom is in a five story converted townhouse located at 242 East 58 Street in New York.) 
Vladimir with Wendle Castle in Oasiq Booth 

Bicycles were a big thing at the show this year…hand made, folding, outrageous and sexy designs appeared in a number of exhibits. 

  

The Furniture Society, which consists of some of America's greatest cabinetmakers, always showcases fine hand made furniture.

There were, as usual, the uninspired wannabes. And frankly, there were no Tsunamis of spectacular design breakthroughs. Still, the show is always refreshing, if not new….and worthy of your attention.

Erica and I are always suckers for the buy it “here and now exhibits” offering irresistible takeaway objects such as ceramics and wood gadgets…I managed to avoid them assiduously, but our daughter Jessica kept up the family tradition and bought!

See ya next year!