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American Art Deco Furniture

Donald Deskey American Art Deco Coffee or Occasional Table

Donald DeskeyDonald Deskey
American [1894 - 1989] 

Donald Deskey was born in Blue Earth, Minnesota in 1894. In 1912 he left for California with a high school diploma. After a series of jobs, a stint in the army, and attendance at The University of California at Berkeley to study architecture and painting he began in 1920 working in advertising, first Chicago then New York. In 1925 he visited the Exposition International des Arts Decoratifs et Industrials Moderns and the Bauhaus in Germany. He came back to New York in 1926 committed to the modern movement. He created store window displays for Saks- Fifth Avenue and made folding screens for Paul Frankl. Frankl paid Deskey $35 per screen and sold them for $400… a tidy profit. Through his work at Saks, Deskey met the company president, Adam Gimbel and showed him some furniture drawings he had made in Paris. Gimbel was impressed enough that he commissioned Deskey to furnish the interior of his Park Avenue apartment, Deskey’s first...
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(1894-1989) designed this handsome table in the late 1920's. The table, with chrome plated tubular steel supports and black lacquered wood top, measures 24" in diameter and is 20" high. Deskey licensed the design to Ypsilanti Reed Furniture Company in 1928 and 1929. It was also made for his firm, Deskey-Voller, Inc., at a later date. It is shown in a stock photograph for Ypsilanti Reed (page 48 in David Hanks' book, Donald Deskey Decorative Designs and Interiors) and also in a photograph of his 1931 commission for Frederic Patterson (page 88 in Hanks' book). It is also shown in a period advertisment featuring Deskey for Armstrong cork.

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Reference# AF122

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