Wendell Castle (1932–2018), master furniture maker, designer, sculptor, and educator, was in the sixth decade of his extraordinary creativity when an emblematic exhibition of his signature works was mounted by the Museum of Art and Design 2016. It blended the artist’s seminal works with his latest collection, produced with digital technology. In part a self-reflection, this eponymous, full-color companion book examines some of Castle’s historically representative works as well as significant contemporary furniture pieces, continuing his highly respected and acclaimed sculptural/functional dialogue. Castle, ever the innovator, was remarkable for his openness to new technologies; he not only embraced an initially complex practice but has “remastered” it. His vast oeuvre represents a prodigious lifework that began in 1958 and aligns with the development of the American art furniture movement. The solo exhibition was a somewhat self-reflective examination of his early ground-breaking works that tested the boundaries of traditional furniture making by presenting his later innovations using new digital technologies such as 3D scanning and modeling, and computer-controlled milling—a digital “remastering” of his immense oeuvre. Unique perspectives on the master’s work are presented by informative essays by authors well-versed on Castle’s celebrated career.

Glenn Adamson is the director of the Museum of Arts and Design in New York. Ronald T. Labacois the Marcia Docter curator at the Museum of Arts and Design. Lowery Stokes Sims, retired curator emerita at the Museum of Arts and Design, was executive director, then president, of The Studio Museum in Harlem, and was on the education and curatorial staff of The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Decorative arts historian Samantha De Tillio is curatorial assistant at the Museum of Arts and Design. Amy Cheatle, social technologist and visual artist at Cornell University, researches collaborative and creative endeavors mediated through technology. Steven J. Jackson is associate professor and director of graduate studies in the Department of Information Science at Cornell University.

Contents: 7
Foreword | Glenn Adamson: 9
Introduction | Ronald T. Labaco: 13
Wendell Castle: Here and There, Then and Now | Lowery Stokes Sims: 19
Artworks | Samantha De Tillio: 31
Digital Entanglements | Amy Cheatle and Steven J. Jackson: 69
Process: 77
Acknowledgments: 83
Photograph Credits: 85
Exhibition Checklist: 86

Crucial to this latest phase of his career . . . is the use of a robot to carve his work. This decision to “tool up” has been a canny move for the octogenarian artist. It has meant that, even as his physical ability to shape the wood has diminished, his sculptural powers have dramatically increased. He is still thinking with his hands, in that each new form begins with drawings and small-scale maquettes. But through technology—and the help of his studio assistants—he can now achieve dramatic scale. . . . With this body of work, Castle has once again reasserted his place at the forefront of innovation in furniture, even as he recalls the deep roots of his own career. Wendell Castle Remastered presents the new work in direct juxtaposition to his first forays into stack-laminated, sculptural furniture.