Wright Auction

I've been an admirer of Pepe Mendoza's work for years. My admiration very quickly became a passion. His distinctive concentrated use of materials: brass, ceramic inlay and an occasional wood base, make his pieces unmistakable. He designed beautiful tables, unusual lamps, trays, bowls and cabinet hardware that are still fresh and exciting sixty years later.

David Cruz

Mendoza

The Mexico City-based interior designer José “Pepe” Mendoza is known for his brass furniture, lighting, tabletop accessories, and hardware pieces. With their turquoise and malachite-colored ceramic inlay, Mendoza's chunky, modernist interpretations of Mesoamerican glyphs and their healthy proportions evoke Blackman Cruz's fondess for Latin American Modernism.

Mendoza had a storied history as the manufacturer of arms for General Pancho Villa, who helped lead the Mexican Revolution, which overthrew dictator Porfirio Díaz, and Mendoza used this foundry to produce his work. In 1957, Evelyn and Jerome Ackerman, contemporaries of Charles and Ray Eames, met Mendoza in Mexico City and began distributing his work through their Los Angeles-based ERA Industries. 

Like many modernist creatives, the Ackermans were part of the design conversation between Mexico and California that had been going on for decades. In the early 1920s, the Mayan touches on the reliefs of Frank Lloyd Wright's Ennis and Hollyhock Houses signaled that Los Angeles was hospitable to such motifs. Meanwhile, in Mexico City, emigres like Clara Porset from Cuba and Bauhaus veteran Michael van Beuren incorporated Mexican craft into their work, earning national recognition in the 1941 Museum of Modern Art's exhibition Organic Design in Home Furnishings. Later, in 1951, esteemed Los Angeles writer Esther McCoy edited an issue heralding Mexican design for the avant-garde Arts & Architecture magazine that highlighted architects like Juan O'Gorman and Luis Barragán. 

Adam Blackman first saw Mendoza's work in the 1990s—a pedestal table—which which he couldn't resist. In a rare coincidence, the table's mate crossed his path a week later, three thousand miles away at his friend Ken Erwin's store, AK1114. That lightning only struck once, and today, Mendoza's work remains as rare as it is recognizable. With its intricate inlay in Aztec and natural forms like fish, birds, seashells, and sunbursts, Mendoza's creations, whether they are brass boxes, tables, lamps, or hardware, continue to keep Blackman Cruz's passion for Pepe alive. 

Stacie Stukin, excerpted from Beauty & Mischief

High Fantasy: The Enchantment(s)
of Blackman Cruz

Adam Blackman and David Cruz officially embarked on their venture, Blackman Cruz, in 1993; in the three decades since, they have created—and helped create—countless worlds, purveying objects of beauty and curiosity (dare we say magic?) culled from around the world. Operating from Los Angeles, the pair first showed their wares in a West Hollywood showroom on La Cienega and, in 2007, moved into their current home on Highland Avenue—an expansive space that was formerly the infamous gay nightclub Probe, known not least for basically playing itself in American Gigolo.

If discussing patina and provenance over a once booze-soaked bar seems incongruous, one might argue that such incongruity is characteristic of both Los Angeles and Blackman Cruz. At the center of the “dream factory,” worlds collide—and collision is perhaps what Blackman and Cruz do best. The pair’s “odd couple partnership,” as the New York Times put it, is the force behind an aesthetic sense that is delightfully difficult to pigeonhole. As the title of their recently released book Beauty & Mischief: The Design Alchemy of Blackman Cruz suggests, Blackman Cruz’s eye together encompasses the serious, sexy, and silly, and the myriad permutations therein. You might find, as one does in this auction, a stunning 1902 Carlo Bugatti chair (itself a treatise on material alchemy) next to an antique drum-playing rabbit automaton (restored to working order by an aerospace engineer), or a painstakingly beaded papoose from Borneo alongside an iconic mid-century modern sofa by Poul Kjærjolm, or a softly glowing snake lamp by Frank Gehry. Or impossibly elegant Gazelle lounges by Dan Johnson, or...Or. Or. Or.

Significantly and much to their credit, Blackman and Cruz have not shied away from certain elements of the archetypal curiosity shop. “We’re merchants,” their website declares. “We sell life enhancers.” In leaning into the longstanding lineage of rarity-purveyors, they show that they recognize the preciousness of curiosity itself—and the adjacent elements of surprise and fantasy. They let themselves be led by the search, and the excitement of the find is gleefully passed to their audience. That said, there are certain figures who serve as touchstones for the pair, designers whose sensibilities mesh well with Blackman Cruz’s vision: Bugatti is among them, as well as Pepe Mendoza and Arturo Pani, both from Mexico City and featured amply in the collection offered here. And then there is the Blackman Cruz Workshop, founded in 1998 by Blackman, Cruz, and creative director Lika Moore, offering limited edition lighting and furniture; among the works selected here are two metalworked lamps by Moore and the uncannily “dripping” Leary marble table.

Design is typically a studied thing, where precision takes precedence. Blackman Cruz breathes a little refreshing chaos into the discipline, finding a comfortable perch amidst a multiplicity of exciting tensions: ancient and contemporary, scientific and spiritual, restrained and resplendent. In our era of ubiquitous quantification and optimization, Blackman Cruz extends an invitation to not be afraid of what draws us in—even if it can’t be named or measured. In other words, to revel in the possibilities of enchantment.