12 January 2006

Armstrong Residence II -- corner planter


This photograph of the plant corner in the Living Room appears to have been taken in the later 1940s. It features the glass table Armstrong created from a part of a fallen tree found near his country house in De Soto, Missouri called the Rockpile.

Armstrong took the tree branch and cut it to create a stable base with three rising supports for an irregularly shaped glass table top.

The table design seems indebted to Isamu Noguchi's biomorphic glass coffee table with three supports recently introduced by Herman Miller. At left, the wooden Eames chair, also a Herman Miller product, seems to reinforce this connection.

This photograph appears to have been taken following World War II. It seems likely that it documents the arrangement in the period following Armstrong's collaboration with Noguchi and Eames on the Magic Chef Building for the American Stove Company (1946).


Photograph courtesy of the Harris Armstrong Archives, Special Collections, Washington University in Saint Louis.

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