The table exhibited at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1929 Image provided by The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Thomas J. Watson Library
of Schoen’s purely modernist nickel and glass table for the Center Theater at Rockefeller Center in 1932 (sold at Christie’s, New York, in 2000). Schoen also worked with another metals frm, Segar Studios, Inc., of New York, which produced the metal furniture for the child’s bedroom of the Met exhibition, the designs serving as the precedents for the Center Theater commission. Therefore, based on the compelling article in The Metal Arts and the fact that neither the present table nor the étagère are stamped with Schmieg, Hungate and Kotzian’s brand, it seems highly probable that these two major works, similar in both style and materials, were executed by the heretofore obscure William O. Chapman Company. In 1930, the Newark Museum presented one of its ongoing historical surveys of the decorative arts. Rugs and Floor Coverings exhibited textiles from Antiquity to the present day. In the museum’s records of the exhibition, correspondence is preserved detailing that Eugene Schoen and Donald Deskey were asked to loan modernist carpets from their showrooms and decorate the
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museum’s displays with their own furniture designs. In Schoen’s case, he lent French Art Deco textiles which he probably had for sale in his East 60th Street showroom, and two distinctly modern pieces of furniture: The Met’s étagère, and the present tiered table. What seems clear is that Schoen prized these two pieces as examples of modernity, and regarded them as variations of the same theme. Now, nearly ninety years afer its last appearance in a museum exhibition, the table will once again be on view at Phillips where collectors and scholars can fnally appreciate this unique masterwork in person.
In addition to the references illustrating the present lot, the author is indebted to the early exhibition catalogue authored by Karen Davies, At Home in Manhattan: Modern Decorative Arts 1925 to the Depression (Yale University Art Gallery, 1983); and Paul Donzella and Eric Kohler, Eugene Schoen Furniture from the Morris & Gwendolyn Cafritz Estate, (Donzella Ltd., New York, 2008).
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