Modern Design Auction - DAY TWO
Lot 796:
James Monroe Camp 74 Studio Made Coffee Table. Freeform natural top on 4 Leg Base. African American Designer Artist. Signed J CAMP ’74. James Camp, known as Jay, was also the founder of an arts and crafts community on Sansom Street in Center City in the ’60s that attracted artisans to set up shop as a kind of arts-and-crafts cooperative. In 1967, Jay set up his own gallery and work studio at 2035 Sansom St. It was next to a parking garage, and he convinced the garage manager to box in the area to create small shops. He called it Sansom Village and craftspeople from all over the region moved in. In the mid-’60s, he was the demonstration coordinator for the NAACP in Camden trying to get city officials to deal with segregation, slum lords and housing problems. James Monroe Camp was a self-taught, African-American artist who began working in wood to fill what he called "a need for self-expression." After serving as a drill sergeant in the Korean War, Mr. Camp moved to Camden, New Jersey where he opened his first woodworking studio in 1963, after a brief career as an electrician at RCA. He moved operations to Philadelphia in 1967, opening his eponymous studio, J. Camp Designs, at 20th and Sansom Street. Camp was well-known in Philadelphia craft circles and beyond, purportedly earning commissions from the likes of Hollywood superstars Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis Jr., and John Wayne. It’s unknown how many furniture and woodworking commissions Camp received, but the great pride he took with his creations (they are almost always effusively signed), the small size of his studio, and the rarity with which his work appears on the secondary market, suggests that he was likely working alone and produced a modest output over his career. Camp’s brand of organic modernism is expressed through heavily carved, massive forms in laminated or solid walnut with simple joinery and echoes the influence of fellow East coast woodworkers like Wendell Castle. This generation of woodworkers pushed furniture to the forefront of the American craft movement, which by 1972 was solidly canonized with the opening of the Smithsonian’s Renwick Gallery, and its inaugural exhibition "Wooden Works: Furniture Objects by Five Contemporary Craftsmen."
Dimensions: H: 15 inches: W: 62 inches: D: 18 inches —
Condition: Light wear. Some age splits to top
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