Indies Production: Hybrid Antiques
At first the immigrating Europeans brought their own furniture, attempting to establish a genteel lifestyle when they began establishing remote colonies around the world in the 17th century, raising tobacco, cotton, sugar cane and other crops for trade.
When their soft pine and walnut chairs and beds rotted in the tropical heat, the colonists turned to local craftsmen, who duplicated the European styles in mahogany and other indigenous hardwoods but added their own artistic twists.
What emerged was a collection of fine furniture reflecting both the colonizing nation--the Dutch, English, Spanish, Portuguese, French and Danish--and the unique native art of each colonized country from India and the Philippines to the Caribbean, the areas then known generally as the East and West Indies. Mahogany planter’s chairs were embellished with palm frond motifs, and ebony tables were inlaid with ivory.
“It is a historical commentary on what we did and where we came from,” says Bob Garcia, a partner in Therien & Co., antique dealers located on La Cienega Boulevard. “And it laid the foundation for our modern global culture.”
To dramatize the unusual antiques, Therien has assembled an exhibit titled “Trade Winds: Tropical Colonial Furniture of the East and West Indies,” which opens Friday.
The timing seemed right, says Garcia. In December, Portugal will return Macao, the oldest European settlement in Asia, to Chinese rule, closing a chapter on European colonization that has lasted for nearly 450 years.
“This is a milestone,” Garcia says. “It represents the end of an era in which a European culture was overlaid on a native culture. The resulting intermix is what this unusual exhibition is all about.”
He cited such pieces as an English Chippendale armchair overlaid with Indian ebony and ivory. “Or a wonderful Chester four-poster bed made in St. Thomas and hung with mosquito netting instead of silks, and built higher, to allow circulation under the bed.”
Tropical Colonial furniture is just starting to come into vogue, says Los Angeles interior designer Craig Wright, owner of Quatrain antique gallery on La Cienega Boulevard.
“Most of the pieces are very strong,” Wright says. “They are European derivatives but are taken to an unusual bent, something with a twist to it. They can become very sculptural and can be combined in many ways with contemporary, spare settings.”
This show is believed to be the first to focus only on the East and West Indies, says Therien partner Philip Stites, who was putting finishing touches on the exhibit this week. “The pieces are extraordinarily crafted by people who’d never even seen Europe--they had never been anywhere,” he says. “And there is so much irony. This ebony table is English in design, but look at the legs--they are ornately carved to look almost like a reptile--maybe an alligator.”
About 15 examples of antique furniture from private collections will be displayed with pieces from Therien & Co.’s own inventory.
The primary purpose of the exhibit is to demonstrate how the mix of Eastern and Western cultures influenced style and, by extension, became the foundation of today’s “global” culture, Garcia says.
After tonight’s opening fund-raiser, a benefit for the Decorative Arts Council of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the exhibit will be open to the public.
*
“Trade Winds,” through Oct. 22, Therien & Co., 716 N. La Cienega Blvd. Open 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Monday-Friday; 11 a.m.-4 p.m. Saturday, closed Sunday. Free. (310) 657-4615.