Vladimir Kagan's Blog

My MAD Museum’s Artist Visionary Award

My moment of Glory under the Sun

Copyright Vladimir Kagan, November 17, 2011

 

The VISIONARY awards waiting to be distributed to this year's winners

Me in front of the coveted bronze award

This past Monday I was honored at a very elegant award’s dinner VISIONARIES 2011 given by the MAD Museum. (Museum of Art & Design)…. It was my moment of hovering in stratified air: My very distinguished fellow awardees were Denis Abrams, President of Benjamin Moore Paints, who received the well deserved CORPORATE VISIONARY AWARD for the splendid job his company is doing with color and promoting Green. Next at the podium was Robert King, the founder and CEO of Humanscale, who’s company produces some of the most elegant ergonomic office furniture in America and who generously donated three of his chairs to the fund-raising auction (I hope that my bid won at least one of them!) His award was as a DESIGN VISIONARY…. the emotional occasion of the evening was a presentation of a LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT VISIONARY AWARD given in the memory of Jean-Louis Dumas the founder of Hermes, accepted by his handsome son, who flew in from Paris for this event…. And then there was me, hobbling up to the podium to receive the Museum’s ARTIST VISIONARY AWARD… a tough category, as there were so many qualified candidates out there beside me.

 

Holly Hotchner, the MAD Museum's Director, welcoming me to the podium to receive my award

My moment in the limelight! Accepting my beautiful award

 

Congratulations from Pierre-Louis Dumas of Hermes and Holly Hotchner

Returning to my table for a standing ovation - that's Ralph Pucci facing and Joe Vitagliano, the C.O.O. of my company with back to camera

What became evident at this chic evening was that I am truly a minimalist, (not in my creativity but in my diminished size!) It was apparent, that to be important in the corporate world, it is mandatory to be six foot tall or over. My shrunken 5’5” (I used to be slightly taller than 5’6”) just doesn’t cut it. Even the ladies towered over me! (You can imagine what that did to my ego!) To mitigate this shortcoming, they took a group photo for posterity with me surrounded by two of the ladies sitting in front of the towering giants standing behind.

 
The gaggle of awardees standing (I'm the diminutive one fourth from the right... if you haven't already guessed!) From left Denis Abrams, Pierre-Alexis Dumas, Holly Hotchner, me and Robert King

 ...And the more congenial group photo: yours truly seated between Holly Hotchner and my wife, Erica. Standing from left: Pierre-Alexis Dumas, Robert King, Lewis Kruger - Board Chairman, Denis Abrams, an important Board member whose name I've forgotten and Barbara Tober - Chair Emerita

These tall gentlemen had a lot to say to earn their rewards…some were reading from documents four or five pages or longer… (I had a one-pager tucked into my coat pocket, primarily because, under duress, I can’t remember the names I needed to acknowledge for this Oscar moment.) In a spurt of genius, I decided to scrap notes and talk off the cuff… no names, no thank you’s, but a lot of accolades to the museum for selecting ME for this award…. I was rewarded with a standing ovation…(so there go your giants… speech may be silver, but brevity is golden).

 At the cocktail reception, from left to right: my daughter Jessica Cushman, my wife Erica, Michael Hertenstein (restaurateur whose latest creation is Catch in the Meatpacking District), me, Dr. Brian Saltzman (owner of the Robert restaurant at the MAD Museum) and  a lovely lady, whose name I don't remember.

The elegant guests at the jam packed cocktail reception

Cindy Allen, editor of Interior Design Magazine - Rene Landegger with Erica - Wendell Castle

 
Two still-lifes - the tasteful table arrangement with hand blown glass flowers and the bronze awards

The evening was a huge success both financially and culturally. We managed to fill two tables of 12 each with friends and family. The trophy is one of the most artistic pieces of sculpture I have ever received: a sleek solid bronze abstraction on an engraved black marble pedestal…. worthy of being in a museum! (I had to clear a bookshelf to give it the space it deserves.)

 

Today, I am back down to earth, rocking in my old office chair as I inform you of Monday night’s memorable moments.

 

 

Photo credit: all photos by Ric Kallaher

A visit to Italy

SWITZERLAND vs. ITALY

Copyright Vladimir Kagan November 13, 2011

 

SWITZERLAND  pristine – precise – precious – predictable

 

 ITALY  Precarious – precipitous – un-predictable and romantic

 

The why’s for this difference is a matter of temperament. The Swiss will be Swiss and the Italians, well... they are a different breed.

 

The transition happens abruptly as you cross the border from Brig in Switzerland to Domodossola in Italy, the once dreaded border town that could hold you in limbo for hours as you waited for the lethargic customs officials to do their job and you tried to remember where you had stashed your documents. Now you pass through in a flash. Its railroad station is reduced to a ghost of its bustling self, surrounded by dilapidated warehouses and railroad cars covered in graffiti.  (The common market sealed its fate!) However, as the train shoots just a few miles south of Domodossola, you are smitten by bucolic alpine lakes that glide past your window: Isola, Como, Maggiori … each picture postcard perfect…. By contrast, Brig, the pristine Swiss border town is tucked into a steep ravine with towering snow-capped mountains and Zermatt looming above its black forests.

 
Brig: the Swiss border town buried deep in a ravine of black forests and towering mountains

Domodossola: Across the border in italy - a huge freight terminal and Italian graffiti artists at work

Our Swiss Eurostar train from Geneva to Milan rides as smoothly as silk, luxuriating in comfortable armchairs covered in luscious textiles. The only disappointment in this 200 miles per hour bullet “cocoon” is the sleek dining-car: once the pride of any railroad, with china dishes, cloth napkins, choice cutlery and glassware. This luxury has given way to paper plates and cups with plastic cutlery and cafeteria-style service…. Still, the food was excellent.

 The state-of-the-art Swiss Eurostar passing vinyards planted on evey square inch of the mountain 


in fact, most views out of the high-speed train photograph like this - Swoosh!

and now for a glimps of the northern itialian countryside - (these are photos from the internet)... the train was too fast to get good photos.

We transferred trains in Milan, to the Italian version of the Eurostar, (albeit 20 years older) The décor was drab, the train rattles at high speed through ramshackle cityscapes…. trivial announcements are made in Italian and translated into English, but important ones are only in Italian! After coming to a stop in Bologna, we watched passengers disembark, (like rats leaving a sinking ship). Something was amiss, but we blissfully remained in our seats as no one bothered to inform us that the train had engine problems… Ultimately, we realized that we were the sole passengers left on the train and tried to get off, but all the doors had closed…. What seemed like an eternity later, a conductor, making his sweep of the train before it was towed off to the repair yard, rescued us. The experience though amusing, was Kafkaesque…. But I am diverting… As the train careened through the countryside, leaving drab cities behind, the landscape gave way to verdant orchards and lush vineyards. …. We arrived in Forli at our hotel and a four-course dinner in a neighborhood restaurant (Italians are proud of their food and keep the restaurants brightly lit unlike their Swiss counterparts where the dim lighting supposedly enhances the atmosphere) Our meal started with an overflowing tray of salami, sausages cheese and prosciutto, followed by the prima course: a platter of pasta smothered with aromatic white truffles! (the regional specialty) and finally the main course of freshly caught local fish, grilled to perfection, washed down with bottles of mellow Italian red wine. Our bacchanalian feast ended with a lemon sorbet that melted in your mouth. … The comparison between Italy and Switzerland became superfluous. (Forli is located in Romany, reputed to have Italy’s best cuisine… though neighboring states may dispute the claim.)

 

The next morning we dashed off to our factory and the glamorous new showrooms and design offices, where we were overwhelmed by the progress already accomplished in the developing of the prototype of my new collection…. Working three ten-hour days with an enthusiastic design staff, we fleshed out the collection - selected colors and fabrics - developed a design concepts for the exhibit space of a new VLADIMIR KAGAN collection for this January’s vaunted Maison & Objet show in Paris, to be followed in April at the Salone di Mobile in Milan.

 

••••

 

Upshot: with the Kagans, there is no planning ahead: our visit to Italy has scuttled our winter plans from a docile retreat in Florida to a topsy-turvy schedule of travel. Paris was certainly not on the agenda, nor was Milan. One thing is certain: in the Kagan household…. NOTHING is cast in stone.

 

….Unfortunately, for a preview of the designs, you will have to wait for Paris… until then, they are under wraps.

 

 

 

A visit with John Makepeace

John Makepeace: England’s preeminent furniture maker

Copyright Vladimir Kagan November 8, 2011

 

I think of myself as a modernist – in fact I am an antiquarian.

John Makepeace is a true modernist!

 

   I live amongst clutter; antiques, a mish-mash of collections and a house full of often reject Kagan furniture…. (That describes our modern apartment in New York). -  Come to Nantucket and our house is full of antiques; some purchased – some acquired with the house over fifty years ago. (There are fewer than a dozen pieces of original Kagan furniture in the entire house and its garden)… Visit us in Palm Beach and you will be shocked to find NOT a single piece of Kagan - only threadbare thrift shop stuff… That is how yours truly, a designer of modern furniture lives! 

 

It is astounding that two devotees of modern can live so differently. (I wanna be like John!) But much as I try to be a minimalist, Erica and I are insufferable maximalists – more is more!

We visited John Makepeace in his 16^th- 18^th Century stone house called FARRS in the little town of Beaminster (population 3,000) in Dorset, located in the South West of England, across the Channel from France. In this historic home, John and Jenny Makepeace have caringly restored all the architectural details into a minimalist aesthetic…. Look through the antique iron framed windows into the garden and you see topiary of yew trees planted in 1840 that have grown into wonderfully amorphous shapes over last 170 years. The ancient stonewall driveway to the house is planted with an avenue of evergreens, which are carefully clipped each year. (These are known by the exotic name of Phylleria latifolia - commonly known as English Olive, although no such thing exists). And then there is Jenny’s abundant fruit, flower and vegetable garden, which provided us with delectable meals.

 Jenny and John Makepeace welcoming Erica and myself to their home in Beaminster, Dorset

Views from the windows into the gardens and the villiage beyond

Walk into the kitchen and you see Sweden's gift to England, the AGA stove which is on 24/7 and keeps the damp out of the entire house.

The Makepeaces found their amusing kitchen chairs on a trip to Italy

John and Jenny have tastefully decorated this gem of a country house with surprising colors and carefully selected modern and contemporary applied art, all illuminated with state of the art lighting. Their home is filled with exquisite examples of John’s unique furniture. He never replicates his work… each piece is a commission or a one-off design.

 

Our beautiful guest room was furnished with one-of-a-kind Makepeace furniture surounded by sensitively restored architectural details

 

John walking us through the house 

The dining room filled with examples of John's chairs and table

In the hallway, a grandfather's Clock in a Makepeace case

 John occupies a unique place in English furniture design and making. He has succeeded in expressing his philosophy of sustainability, craftsmanship and sculptural visions through sensitive workmanship, often applying high technology to achieve his unique interpretations of contemporary furniture. His illustrious career has spanned nearly five decades.  

 

examples of John Makepeace's poetic sculptural furniture

John had the vision to promulgate his design philosophy through teaching young craftsmen and women to think creatively outside of the box, but also to recognize the need for a practical business sensibility. To this end, he bought Parnham House in Dorset in 1976, (a dilapidated Grand 1 Tudor house,) which he restored into a center for learning furniture making. It became famous as the Parnham Trust, a School for Craftsmen in Wood, which turned into the Parnham College, alongside but separately from his own studio and workshops. The school provided integrated courses in furniture design, making and business management. One of his early students was Viscount Lindley,  nephew to the Queen of England, who has gone on to become a celebrated furniture maker and Konstantin Grcic, the Munich based, celebrated furniture and industrial designer.

John gave up running the Trust in 2001 when he sold Parnham and moved the college to its new and fascinating campus at Hooke Park where it amalgamated with the Architectural Association, the international school of architecture, where pupils today learn on high-tech computers (not a drafting board in sight!) however they still have the pleasure of working hands-on, creating their adventurous ideas in the workshop. All the recent buildings in the wooded complex are student designed. (To give you an idea of the school’s Avant-garde credentials: it is the same school that gave us Zaha Hadid.)

This unprepossessing Quonset Hut structure houses the workshops of the Architectural School... don't be fooled by its simple shape... it is built with state-of-the-art high-tech timber-building technology

The building's wall and ceiling are bent fresh sapling woods harvested in the forest when thinning it out 

construction details, using green timber, steel cables and concrete

A building housing the school's cafeteria

model of new building under construction     -      experimental structural joinery

 Last year, John was nominated for the Duke of Edinburgh's Designers Prize alongside Zaha Hadid. The award is intended to “recognize an individuals' total contribution to design through professional practice, leadership, education, changing public perception, innovation and environmental sustainability.” - The award went to Bill Moggridge, inventor of the lap-top (and now director of the Cooper Hewitt Museum in New York) - a very appropriate winner; John was honored with a Special Commendation. 

 

With all this acclaim, John Makepeace remains a modest private man. (He doesn’t own a cell phone and is only a reluctant user of the Internet.)

 

••••

 

In our tightly scheduled twenty-four hours, John introduced us to one of his former pupils, Petter (that is not a spelling mistake) Southall. His workshop is in an old barn, tucked away in a bucolic setting. Petter works with two shop assistants and makes extraordinarily complex modern furniture using the ancient bending techniques of the shipwrights that had been building wooden boats in the neighborhood for generations. Out of this mix of old and the new, Petter has produced furniture of astonishing modern idiom.

 

Petter Southall in front of his shop and with projects in work 

••••

 

Our brief visit was filled with unexpected experiences, not least of all, the narrow single lane roads, running between high grassy banks with towering hedges. Everyone drives with great abandon around hairpin turns, no one blows their horn, but a sudden encounter with a mammoth lorry (truck to my American readers) leaves you breathless. Who will back down? (Of course we did - frequently) a quarter mile down a winding road till there was space to by-pass… Miraculously, we survived these hair-raising encounters, and made it to the train on time… albeit three hours later than planned.

Close encounter with a behemoth