Incollect Magazine - Issue 2

Issue 2 56 www.incollect.com The LaVernes first experimented with their proprietary process for making the patinated bronze, brass and pewter works in the 1950s and it took several years to refine. But it yielded astonishing results: during the oxidation process, colors fade and bleed into one another, surface textures vary, making the designs reappear in a different light from different angles. The LaVernes worked hard to try to control the many elements of a design but left the final patina of a piece up to chance. Lord notes that LaVerne pieces are low maintenance and generally in very good condition today because of the natural patinas. “Pewter oxidation processes are strongly set and that acts as a kind of protection,” he says. “Once they’re patinated and colored they will never change, like a bronze sculpture that has been patinated to fix color in the metal. The fact that they are so beautifully decorated also deters them from being used as simple tables on which you eat, drink and put stuff on.” The LaVernes continued to make the oxidized tables and credenzas throughout their long career, but by the 1970s their creative interests had evolved more towards free- standing sculpture. They experimented with the ancient and complicated “lost wax” bronze-casting method and even brought in a mold maker from Milan and started casting bronze pieces. “They did it for a few years but quickly found it was not a cost-effective method to make large-scale sculptures and was very time-consuming,” says Lobel. The cast bronze pieces, which are in small editions and many unique, are among the more expensive works by the LaVernes because they are rarer. Lobel has a table at the front of his gallery depicting an intertwined couple, titled “Fluidity.” from the early 1970s which is a one-of-a-kind cast bronze sculpture on a patinated bronze base. With a glass slab on top, it functions as a table, but it is also a modernist sculpture, pointing towards the abstraction of the human form that was popular in the mid-20th century. But it was mostly large-scale hand-welded, brazed bronze sculptures that occupied their creativity in the 1970s, some of which can be seen in Lobel’s gallery and at Donzella in the same building. Made in very small editions, many of them one of a kind; they completely transcend furniture. Lobel has a pair of monumental bronze floor lamps from the 1970s, essentially abstract sculptures, titled “Grace” and “Harmony,” in which functionality is an afterthought. They’re all about form and technique. Today, the first generation of collectors has passed on and rare early LaVerne material has surfaced on the market again. But it is a small window, Lobel says, for he has noticed in the past few years not only a noticeable The endless creativity of Philip and Kelvin LaVerne was applied to such objects as floor lamps and mirrors. These pieces are from the extensive inventory of rare LaVerne works at Lobel Modern. At left, a pair of hand-brazed bronze illuminated sculptures/floor lamps, “Grace” and “Harmony,” these are the only pair created. There are 3 light sources on each, a fluorescent fixture on the backs, the clearly visible glass orbs, and a recessed light in the open top. At right, an important large-scale patinated bronze mirror, which Kelvin LaVerne has identified as a singular, one-of-a-kind work. The frame was created in a technically difficult process, with a serpentine continuous tube in patinated bronze. Photos courtesy Lobel Modern.