Brady Legler, a Kansas City native was born into a family influenced by fashion and art. Brady picked up a paintbrush at the age of 5 and never set it down. Painting became his chosen method of experimentation and personal growth. Forms, textures and colors became Brady’s vocabulary. In his teens he started to branch out by designing jewelry which he saw as functional art (sculpture). He was close to and inspired by his Italian grandmother, a fashion model from the 1940’s to the 1960’s. Brady’s mother, also a model, is the brand ambassador of his now eponymous jewelry line.
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Gabriella Crespi, an important Italian furniture designer, was born in 1922. She studie architecture at the Politecnico in Milan, and was inspired by the work of Le Corbusier’s and Frank Lloyd Wright. Her pieces are unique and certainly fall into the category of art – her tables are not only sculptures but they often are complex with mechanisms which open and close. They require engineering. Her materials of choice are brass and bronze and she sometimes incorporates glass and lucite into her work too, especially her animals series and lamps.
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Philip (born in 1907) and Kelvin (born in 1937) were father and son artists who worked together to create exceptional art pieces which were incorporated into furniture. Each incredibly talented in their own right, Philip and Kelvin's collaboration created a dynamic synergy. Philip studied at the Arts Student League in New York. Kelvin went City College in New York City and switched to Parsons for his last 2 years. Like his father he also studied at the Arts Student League. After finishing school, in the early 1960’s Kelvin joined his father and they began making pieces in pewter and bronze and opened a showroom on East 57th Street in NYC.
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Paul R. Evans II, born in 1931, was a furniture designer, sculptor, and artist, who is most well known for his furniture design and his contribution to the American craft Movement of the 1970s. His unique creations of metal sculpted furniture set him apart. He studied at several institutions including the Philadelphia Textile Institute, Rochester Institute of Technology, School for American Craftsmen, and Cranbrook Academy of Art. He later settled in New Hope, Pennsylvania, and shared a showroom with woodworker Phillip Lloyd Powell.
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Tommi Parzinger, born in 1903, was a German furniture designer and painter. Born in Munich in 1903, he later moved to New York in 1932 escaping the rise of the Nazis and starting his first company in 1939. He had begun by designing for Manhattan style-setter Rena Rosenthal. He then became the head modern furniture designer for Charak Modern, a manufacturer known for its more traditional furniture before his tenure there. Parzinger’s pieces were a hit with designers and he later opened his own showroom, Parzinger Originals, on East 57th Street.
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Vladimir Kagan was born in Germany in 1927, son of a Russian cabinetmaker. He moved to the United States in 1938 and in the years that followed he mostly worked in painting and sculpture. He soon found himself drawn to architecture and design and he graduated from The School of Industrial Art in 1946. He went to Columbia University where he studied architecture. After college he went to work with his father in his woodworking shop where he gained hands-on knowledge and experience working with a material that would factor greatly into his future designs.
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Harvey Probber was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1922. While attending high school, he took a part-time job in a used-furniture store, and was inspired to try his hand at drawing ideas for furniture. Probber sold his first sofa design when he was just 16, for $10. After high school graduation, he accepted a job as designer for Trade Upholstery, a small manufacturing facility on West 17th Street. 1940 was the beginning of American modernism, a time characterized by young designers with talent, initiative, and a willingness to take risks with new ideas.
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Edward Wormley was born in 1907 and studied briefly at the Art Institute of Chicago. When money ran out he went to work as an interior designer for the Marshall Fields & Co department store. During the Depression Wormley was introduced to the president of Dunbar Furniture Corporation of Berne, Indiana which at the time was making old style reproduction furniture. They hired Wormley in the 1930’s to see how the public would respond to more modern pieces. From the start, his pieces were a hit. A devotee to meticulous craftsmanship, he would create some of the most memorable pieces of the mid-20th century.
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Karl Springer, born in 1931 in Germany, emigrated to New York City in 1957. He studied book binding while working at Lord and Taylor and began making small pieces such as Telephone Tables and picture frames covered in snake skin as well as other exotic materials. In the 1960’s his work was discovered by the Duchess of Windsor and she became his first collector and helped to launch his career. He opened a large showroom in New York City and later had showrooms in Miami, Los Angeles and even Tokyo.
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Anzolo Fuga, born in 1914, came from one of Murano’s oldest and most distinguished glassblowing lineages, dating back to the Middle Ages. Fuga attended the Istituto d’Arte di Venezia, a prestigious high school for the arts where the teachers were artists themselves and often experts in glassmaking. There he developed a serious interest in stained glass, which at the time was typically made using large sheets of homogenous glass. He used glass fragments, murrhines, and glass rods fused with lead, all worked hot, and sometimes engraved the panels with acid for added effect. In 1938 he started a new stained-glass department within the Istituto and went on to dedicate much of his life to the creation of stained-glass panels, each a work of art.
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