Los Angeles Modern Auctions (LAMA)

Anne and I became friends when I moved back to San Diego from New York to realize my first furniture commission for the Vena-Mondt loft in LA. Anne and her husband Bob had purchased two sculptures from my first commercial gallery show at Quint Gallery a year or two earlier, but I hadn’t gotten to know Anne at that time. Anne presented herself as the beautiful and affluent housewife she was, but it didn’t take long to figure out she was better described as an intelligent, curious, generous, wild-at-heart, and very fun free spirit.  She was looking for adventures and new experiences. So was I.

One evening, over what was likely too much wine, Anne told me she was looking for a business project as her teenage daughters were needing, and wanting, less of her time. In the spirit of ideas being free, I tossed out the notion of doing a furniture company together, assuming the idea would be gone by the time we awoke the following day. Instead, Anne called the next morning and said let’s get going. My return to New York was upended, and Domestic Furniture Company was launched.

I provided the ideas and designs, Anne and Bob gave enough money to get Domestic Furniture’s doors open, and Anne added immeasurable enthusiasm, hard work, intelligence, humor, warmth, and fun, as well as her always-present casual and elegant charms.

I’m sure from the outside Domestic Furniture Co. seemed like a business. And in a sense, it had to be business as our only source of funds to keep the doors open, after we had opened them, was revenue we generated from sales. While we initially wanted to manufacture the furniture on a larger scale, we didn’t have the money—or strategy—to make that happen. So, to keep money coming in Domestic Furniture Co. became a custom designing, selling, and furniture building enterprise. Thinking back, it would be more accurate to say Anne and I saw Domestic Furniture Co. as more of a project than a business. But what it really turned out to be was a wonderful adventure that transformed Anne’s and my life in ways we never imagined.

Within a few too short years Anne and I decided to part ways with Domestic Furniture. For myself I had to focus on my move to Seattle to set up a wood shop to build my furniture and sculpture. Domestic Furniture had evolved into less of a furniture company and more an avenue to explore ideas through the many commissions I was getting. To do so I wanted to fully control how it was made. Anne’s focus became building a magnificent home for her, Bob, and their many dogs.

The furniture in this sale were made for Anne and Bob’s home, as well as Bob’s office at the company he ran at the time. The pieces for their home were done shortly after I completed the work for the Getty commission and are early pieces from my then new wood shop, Big Leaf Manufacturing.

Anne, Bob, and I have remained close friends. They have sold the remarkable residence Anne created to relocate to a home more appropriate for this period of their lives. I’m pleased LAMA is working with them to find new homes for their pieces of domestic furniture.