Art Carpenter, furniture designer

May 30th, 2006 Category Furniture

Art Espenet Carpenter, a self-taught woodworker whose spare but sexy furniture received national acclaim and influenced generations of master craftsmen, died. He was 86.

Carpenter suffered a heart attack Thursday at his home in Bolinas, the Marin County town he helped make a haven for artists after another house he built and furnished there was featured in Life magazine in 1966, said his son, Tripp Carpenter.

Known professionally as Espenet, the elder Carpenter produced pieces that now are in the collections of the Smithsonian Institution and were exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art and the Museum of Contemporary Crafts in New York City.

Tripp Carpenter said his father’s best-known piece was a “wishbone” chair. Although he never wanted to repeat himself as an artist, he made several hundred of the chairs to support his family, the son said.

Born in New York in 1920, Carpenter enlisted in the Navy after graduating from Dartmouth College. After World War II, he promised himself he would spend the rest of his life doing something he enjoyed. Supporting himself on a $100 monthly GI Bill pension, he moved to San Francisco and turned out bowls while learning the woodworker’s craft.
In a 1983 interview for the DIY Network, Carpenter described his flowing furniture designs as “carpenter-style, practical and utilitarian.”