Incollect Magazine - Issue 4

Incollect Magazine 123 2023 McArthur’s furniture was hand produced and finished, so buyers could get anything they wanted as far as scale, shape or color. “The structure is the decoration with Warren’s furniture,” says Nick Brown, owner of Appleton Gallery in Maine, referring to the way metal joinery was made a decorative feature of his designs. “As an inventor, he had several patents for a unique assembly process that combined first steel tube then very soon after aluminum tube with standardized parts for joinery and an internally threaded rod to create a compression assembly to hold it all together,” Brown says. Appleton Gallery in Maine, Objects 20c from West Palm Beach, Converso and Lobel Modern in New York have signature early examples of McArthur’s innovative designs using tube metal. Appleton has a set of “Spoon Back” dining chairs, produced in the early 1930s, and made after he opened his first shop in June of 1930 in Los Angeles. The designs were an instant success, Brown says. “This use of a new material, aluminum tubing for the building of lightweight furniture, with flexible framing, while offering a rainbow of colors and the durability of the anodic coating caught the eye of architects, hoteliers, designers and leading figures of the social, entertainment, and financial worlds almost immediately when he opened his first shop.” Part of the allure was the unique, distinctive matte silver finish. “McArthur references the soft brilliance of old polished silver as his inspiration for the surface finish of his anodized aluminum tubing,” Brown explains, “in contrast to the mirror hardness of nickel/chrome plating popular with the Bauhaus crowd and their American followers. In keeping with this old silver theme, the earliest of his aluminum joineries are not ribbed or smooth walled but resemble a traditional napkin ring with flared ends.” Brown has specialized in McArthur’s furniture since the mid-1980s and is an expert in the area. He recently reviewed various sites that offer Warren McArthur and, he says, “a lot Warren McArthur “The Chairman” style no. 1081, round lounge chair in anodized aluminum and leather. Manufactured at his factory in Connecticut circa 1936. From Appleton. White cork top walnut side table, Model 5026 by Paul T. Frankl circa 1948, from Glen Leroux Antiques. This iconic original “Airline” armchair was designed by KEM (Karl Emanuel Martin) Weber in 1934 and produced in a limited run of 300 in 1938 for the offices at Walt Disney Studios in Burbank, California. The design is adapted from cantilevered chair designs by Marcel Breuer and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. The Airline Chair’s streamlined design is a quintessential expression of Modernism and the Machine Age. Photo courtesy Peter Blake Gallery.