Brazilian modern master Joaquim Tenreiro’s designs are paired with those of Danish designer Ole Wanscher in “The Noble Line – Wanscher + Tenreiro, Furniture Masterworks” which opens tomorrow March 20 on the upper level of the 64 White Street gallery. While these designers never crossed paths, a common thread weaves their work together: reimagining European colonial furniture into modernist designs. Tenreiro’s translation of Ancient and colonial aesthetics into modern design is evident in both his ebonized wood checkerboard coffee table designed in 1950, on view in the exhibition at 64 White Street, and his rosewood wall-hung storage cabinet with a lattice front designed in 1955, on view at 82 Franklin Street. “This coffee table is one of many he designed in the period and a good example of his use of trellises in furniture, which showcases both the colonial and Concretist influences in his work.” explains Research Assistant Mina Warchavchik Hugerth. “The mashrabiya is an architectural element of Arabic residences that was incorporated into Portuguese buildings and taken to Brazil with the first Portuguese settlements. The muxarabi, as the architectural style came to be known in Brazil, is a window screen made of a wooden lattice, that defined the look of Brazilian streets well into the twentieth century, later evolving to its modern heir, the cobogó.”
