Wright Auction

My artistic world is the shape of my way of living and working. It has grown through those experiences which are everyday life to people living in the North. One can see the same continuous process of creating the phenomena in nature as there is in man. Repeated process—winter, spring, summer, autumn—and still always new and surprising.

Tapio Wirkkala

The present collection of design has been assembled by R & Company, in collaboration with Wright, in honor of Charles Stendig (1924-2024) who passed away peacefully this spring at the amazing age of 99. He was a friend to both the gallery and auction house, and he will be deeply missed.

Stendig, Inc., founded by Charles Stendig in 1955, may not be a household name today, but countless European designs now considered iconic were first introduced to American audiences through the company. Stendig, Inc.’s story is one of chance encounters, a keen eye, and a bold attitude. The company started when Stendig connected with Finnish manufacturer Asko after fortuitously meeting a representative in a bar, which led him to import works from Ilmari Tapiovaara, Tapio Wirkkala, and Eero Aarnio. The Pirkka chair by Tapiovaara (Lot 425) stayed with Charlie until the end. The selections of glass by Sarpaneva, Wirkkala and Franck were collected by Charlie during his many visits to Finland.

In 1960, Stendig met Dino Gavina and obtained the distribution rights to Marcel Breuer’s Bauhaus-era designs, which he kept until Knoll acquired Gavina's company in 1968. Throughout the 1960s, Stendig also gained access to several Italian manufacturers and became the primary American source for Radical design. In the early 1970s, he discovered Gufram and began importing works from the stars of the Anti-Design movement. In the early 2000s, Charlie sold with David Rago several of his own extremely rare Cactus coat racks produced by Gufram in a flocked foam, knowing that they were slowly deteriorating and that they needed to be placed with serious collectors. One of those Cactuses was acquired by Dennis Freedman and is now promised to the MFA Houston. In Charlie's honor we present here several 1986 editions by Gufram which are more suitable (and stable) for anyone to collect!   

Stendig believed that the company’s visual identity should be at the same level as the furniture and hired innovative graphic designers. In its first years, Stendig relied on Ivan Chermayeff and Tom Geismar, who created the epochal S logo. Later, Massimo Vignelli took over and, in addition to rebranding the company, created the Stendig calendar, which remains in production today.

Charlie also wasn't above a little rebranding of the designs in his Stendig catalogues. For example, he re-named the Puffo stools the Charlie stools, in honor of Chaplin's famous bowler hat (as well as himself). The firm's catalogues are filled with marvelous photos of models sitting in the furniture. Charlie loved grouping designs in sets of three, and made a point of trying to sell them as such, especially the Castiglioni Toio floor lamps and the Puffo stools, and thus we have honored his marketing genius in this collection.

Charlie and his wife Eleanore, the company’s head of operations, stayed in the business until their retirement in 1976, but their influence still echoes today. Many of the most emblematic designs they introduced in America drew media attention but didn’t always sell. Yet Stendig believed in those pieces and in making them accessible. The field would have been a lot less dynamic if not for his bravery and commitment to finding what was new and exciting.

—Mina Warchavchik Hugerth and James Zemaitis

The R & Company Archives holds a collection of archives from Stendig, Inc., alongside Charles Stendig’s design library. The materials were donated to R & Company by Charlie in April 2023. It seemed like a natural fit. Many of the designers whom R & Company has specialized in over the years, from the Italian Radicals to Wendell Castle and Sergio Rodrigues, were part of the Stendig catalogue. The archive is made available to scholars and students on appointment at 64 White Street, New York.