Walter Lamb saw miles of old bronze tubing lying around the salvage areas of Honolulu Harbor in the mid-1940s. The possibility of recycling this into something new was his epiphany. The innovative use of a jacketed steel tube within an outer tube of naval bronze became the basis for his best known design work – a group of outdoor furniture designs that would evolve into Brown Jordan's premier line and be produced from 1948 until the mid-1980s. In 2008, Brown Jordan re-issued several of Walter Lamb's classic designs from his collection.
Much of what we see on the market belongs to the Series II furniture group originating in 1952. In preparation for the exhibition of several pieces in the Museum of Modern Art’s biennial Good Design show, Walter Lamb refined his earlier designs and production techniques; he redesigned frames in which a single tube could be formed to create the entire outer frame of a chair or a chaise with spot welded points, eliminating 80% of the earlier hand welded joinery – a tremendous saving in production costs – further streamlining Lamb’s designs.
LAMA is proud to present a special selection of design curated by Esoteric Survey, featuring more than 100 works that represent platform founder Steve Aldana's guiding fascination with mid-century design and design history in California. Drawing from Aldana's personal collection as well as from his design-minded community, this collection includes iconic works as well as deeper cuts that represent lesser-known, but nonetheless integral, achievements of postwar artists and designers.
An urban planner by vocation, Aldana has nurtured his fascination with modern design, particularly the strains that emerged in mid-century Southern California, through Esoteric Survey for nearly 15 years. With a desire to share fascinating obscure design figures and document visits to architecture and design sites, he created the blog he named Esoteric Survey in 2009. What first served primarily as a private log for personal reference eventually blossomed into a valuable resource for like-minded design aficionados, and has since taken the form of an immensely popular Instagram account.
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Auction Results Walter Lamb
