Sculptor and furniture designer Wendell Castle (1932–2018) carved a distinct path in furniture making over nearly six decades of a distinguished career, and this long-awaited recording of his oeuvre, Wendell Castle: A Catalogue Raisonné, 1958–2012, beautifully presents the extraordinary scope of his artistry and craftsmanship. The voluminous accounting of his works, beginning with Castle’s earliest, mid-century works through to his unabashed experiments with unconventional materials (gel-coated fiberglass and metallic automobile paint) and his latest signature wood laminations, is comprehensive and detailed. Three essays of varying perspectives introduce the catalogue raisonné followed by an extensive accounting of his enormous oeuvre, his exhibitions, numerous awards, and the collections of his works, as well as a substantive bibliography. With his organic and whimsical approach to his various mediums, he seamlessly merged sculpture and design into one discipline, obscuring the distinction between the two. He invented the technique of carving stacked laminations of wood, and his later explorations into the qualities of fiberglass as a sculptural medium are unparalleled. Castle is widely collected and his works are in the permanent collections of more than 40 museums and cultural institutions around the world, including The Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York); Museum of Modern Art (New York); Smithsonian American Art Museum (Washington, DC); Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal (Quebec, Canada); and the Victoria and Albert Museum (London).Castle has also been the recipient of many honors and awards, including four National Endowment for the Arts grants, three honorary degrees, the American Craft Council Gold Medal, and a Life-time Achievement Award from the Brooklyn Museum of Art.

Emily Evans Eerdmans is a design historian and instructor on the history of interior design and furnishings at the Fashion Institute of Technology, New York. Dave Barry is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American author and columnist, who wrote a nationally syndicated humor column for The Miami Herald from 1983 to 2005.Glenn Adamsonis the director of the Museum of Arts and Design in New York. Jane Adlin is associate curator for design and architecture in the Department of Modern and Contemporary Art at The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Contents: 7
For Wendell Castle’s Raisonné | Dave Barry: 13
Target Practice: The Work of Wendell Castle | Glenn Adamson: 15
Wendell Castle Now | Jane Adlin: 39
Catalogue Raisonné | Emily Evans Eerdmans: 47
About the Catalogue and Key to the Catalogue: 48
Part I: 1958–1961: 51
Part II: 1962–1976: 61
Part III: 1977–1989: 141
Part IV: 1990–2004: 253
Part V: 2005–2012: 389
Acknowledgments: 431
Chronology: 435
Selected Exhibition History: 437
Museum and Public Collections: 459
Academic Appointments, Memberships, and Awards: 461
Media: Films, Videotapes, and Published Work: 463
Selected Bibliography: 465
Index: 506
Photograph Credits: 515
Copyright Page: 516

The first thing to say is that not all of Castle’s works are masterpieces. One of his oft-repeated mottos is, “If you hit the bull’s-eye every time, the target is too near.” His work has always been animated by a fearless willingness to fail, and sometimes he has. But in throwing caution to the wind, he has hit a great many bull’s-eyes, too, some so resoundingly that you can still feel the vibration. . . . Over the course of his career, he has constantly been celebrated for elevating craft to the realm of fine art—despite the fact that he is quite unconcerned with “craft” as a category. He views himself as a sculptor working with the vocabulary of furniture design. In this role, he has inspired the course of major galleries, served as the emblematic figure for museum exhibitions, and encouraged many younger makers to enter the field of studio furniture.