Mid Century Modern Paul Evans Style Brutalist Rectangular Oak Wall Mirror

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About the Item

Mid Century Modern Brutalist Wall mirror, circa 1960s. Perfect for use over a mantel, along a wall or in a bathroom as a vanity. Features a thick oak paneled frame.

Dimensions:
46″ x 1 3/4″ x 31 1/2″ wCreator: Paul Evans (Designer)Dimensions: Height: 31.5 in (80.01 cm)Width: 46 in (116.84 cm)Depth: 1.75 in (4.45 cm)Style: Mid-Century Modern (Of the Period)Materials and Techniques: Mirror,OakPeriod: 1960-1969Date of Manufacture: 1960sCondition: GoodWear consistent with age and use. Very Good; Gently Used.Seller Location: Dayton, OHReference Number: Seller: 431781stDibs: LU5343242343752Shop All Paul Evans

Paul Evans

A designer and sculptor, Paul Evans was a wild card of late 20th century modernism. A leading light of the American Studio Furniture movement, Evanss sideboards, credenzas, coffee tables and other work manifests a singular aesthetic sense, as well as a seemingly contradictory appreciation for both folk art forms and for new materials and technologies.

Evanss primary material was metal, not wood, which was favored by his fellow studio designers, and Bucks County, Pennsylvania, neighbors George Nakashima and Phillip Lloyd Powell. He trained in metallurgy and studied at the Cranbrook Academy of Art, the famed crucible of modern design and art in suburban Detroit. For a time early in his career, Evans also worked at Sturbridge Village, a historical living museum in Massachusetts, where he gave demonstrations as a costumed silversmith.

Evanss earliest work unites these influences. The pieces that made his reputation are known as sculpted-front cabinets: wood cases faced with box-like high-relief patinated steel mounts laid out in a grid pattern. Each mount contains a metal emblem, or glyph, and the effect is that of a brawny quilt.

Evanss later work falls into three distinct style groups. His sculpted-bronze pieces, begun in the mid-1960s, show Evans at his most expressive. He employed a technique in which resin is hand-shaped, and later sprayed with a metal coating, allowing for artistic nuance in the making of chairs, tables and case pieces. Later in the decade and into the 1970s, Evans produced his Argente series for celebrated manufacturer Directional (a brand known to vintage mid-century modern furniture collectors everywhere): consoles and other furniture forms that feature aluminum and pigment-infused metal surfaces welded into abstract organic forms and patterns.

Last, Evans’s Cityscape design series a milestone in the history of brutalist design meshed perfectly with the sleek, high tech sensibility of the later 70s. Evans constructed boxy forms and faced them with irregular mosaic patterns that mixed rectangular plaques of chromed steel, bronze or burlwood veneer. These, like all of Paul Evanss designs, are both useful and eye-catching. But their appeal has another, more visceral quality: these pieces have clearly been touched by an artists hand.

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