Hank Gilpin: New Furniture and a Display of Commissioned Projects

October 9 — November 7 at Gallery NAGA

For the past 30 years Hank Gilpin has made furniture to order for clients throughout the country, designing and building more than 2000 pieces.  Selected works have been exhibited in museum and gallery group shows, but the rest have been seen mainly by those who own them.  The first solo show of Gilpin’s career presents both new work and a cascade of images of furniture he’s made for clients over three decades.

Hank Gilpin: New Furniture and a Display of Commissioned Projects runs from
October 9 through November 7.  A reception for Gilpin and the public will be held at the gallery on Friday, October 9 from 6 to 8 p.m.  Gilpin also offers a free public talk, Commissioning Studio Furniture: A Primer with a Master, on Tuesday, October 20
at 6 p.m.

To learn more of Gilpin’s history, we recently asked him a few questions:

Q: Your work was in New American Furniture at Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts in 1989, the show that established studio furniture nationally, and has been in every major museum survey since.  Yet, this is your first solo gallery exhibition.  We’re surprised. Are you?

A: Well, no. It's quite difficult to make a living with shows and I really wasn't interested.

Q: We know you weren’t interested.  We’ve been asking you for 20 years!

A: You don’t want to rush these things.

Q: Studio furnituremakers usually create beautifully crafted objects.  Many of the most influential also have a particular aesthetic.  Garry Knox Bennett uses a vast array of materials and joins them unexpectedly.  Judy Kensley McKie brings in the spirit of the animal world.  How do you see your aesthetic?

A: I think I’m trying to get people to think about trees more.  I’m not certain most people think about trees when they think about wood.  They certainly don’t think about forests and all of that completely.

Stylistically, I’m trying to design and make pieces that have a familiar quality so that people don’t have to figure them out, even if they’re unique.  I want someone with a furnished home to come into my shop and say, “This would fit.”  Occasionally, I come up with a form that fits in many different periods comfortably.

It’s kind of an aesthetic driven by an analysis of historical precedents without creating pieces that are too obviously derivative.  I don’t want the pieces to be flashy, either.  I want them to be understated.  That way people can acquire a number, not just one.

Q: How would you describe the work you’ve made for this show?

A: It’s a pretty interesting mix of ways I’ve been thinking for the past 10 years. Some simple practical furniture.  Some explorations of wood display, of sculpture.  I’m deeply interested in small objects that anyone can own.

I’ve been working very, very obviously with wild pieces of wood, wood most shops wouldn’t work with - twisted, cracked, bent, checked, very difficult to find a use for. I’m exploring way past lumber to cutoffs, throwaways, discards.

Q: You’ve just finished a very large commission for the Boston Golf Club in Hingham.

A: Yes.  It was an extremely large and unique commission.  I met an individual who completely understood my capabilities and gave me an open-ended opportunity to solve a myriad of problems - buildings, setting, landscape, furniture - and tie them all together so that a golf course would feel like a home.  He and I worked together for eight years, and as the project developed and got more complex, and he got more comfortable with my aesthetic, he gave me more and more opportunity to hold it all - native trees, local lumber, comfortable furniture, familiar New England forms for the buildings.

It was an incredibly cool project that let me use my whole thing.  I was just up at the BGC for the annual memorial dinner for the late, great John Mineck, the smartest guy I ever knew with the best sense of humor.  Think about that.

Q: You’re offering a public talk on your experiences making furniture on commission for clients, which has been the majority of your work for the past 30 years.  What do you hope to share?

A: What you always hope to share, the idea that anybody can ask me or anyone else to make a piece that doesn’t yet exist.  You don’t have to buy what’s on the floor. That’s the main thing that custom furniture offers, making the thing you can’t find - the desk that’s bigger, the lumber that’s out of fashion, the tree in your yard you’d like to convert to something for yourself.  Some people have piles of wood their grandfather gave them in a barn.  Call me; we’ll figure something out.