Not Your Grandpa’s Adirondack Chair

The Adirondack Museum in Blue Mountain Lake is now showing "Rustic Tomorrow," a traveling exhibition of six collaborations between designers and furniture makers.

Mark McMenamin -- Interior Design, 3/1/2009

What do you get when you pair six contemporary designers with a half dozen traditional furniture-makers? The Adirondack Museum in Blue Mountain Lake, New York, answered that question by organizing “Rustic Tomorrow,” a traveling exhibition of six collaborations between the two groups. The contrast of progressive aesthetics and old-school craftsmanship not only stretches the boundaries of outdoorsy Adirondack furnishings but also shapes a sustainability model. A desk by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill consulting partner David Childs was built by Wayne Ignatuck with red oak salvaged from his yard and walnut castoffs from a nearby farm. A table by Shope Reno Wharton Associates’s Allan Shope was constructed in black walnut by Judd Weisburg. Rounding out the teams on the contemporary side are Interior Design Hall of Fame member Michael Graves, the namesake founders of Nils Luderowski Architect and Dennis Wedlick Architect, and 20th Century Fox art director Thomas Cardone.

On view at the Munson-Williams-Proctor Art Institute in Utica, New York, through April 19, the show reopens April 22 at New York’s D. Wigmore Fine Art, where a May 6 auction of the pieces will benefit the Adirondack Museum.