Musashi Table
We were asked to design a VIP lounge for Sotheby’s Contemporary and Modern Auction in November. The Musashi Tables were created for Karen’s Sotheby’s Lounge design.
Miyamoto Musashi was an artist-warrior living in Japan in the 1600s. The base casting was originally created for East Hotel in Hamburg, a repurposed foundry exploring the surrealism of a westerner’s first visit to Asia. The top is hand-carved from a single slab of Sycamore.
PROCESS + MATERIALS
Their bases are carved in maple and cast in 93% recycled magnesium-aluminum alloy, hand-polished and rubbed with elixirs to patina the fresh metal. Their tops are hand-carved 4.5”-thick, old-growth spalted Sycamore from Michigan dried in a solar kiln, then hand-rubbed with natural oil finish. Each table is unique. The massive wood has irregularities such as spalting and irregular grain. Made in Chicago.
DIMENSIONS
H 18 in. x Dm 18.75 in.
H 45.72 cm x Dm 47.63 cm
VARIATIONS
Each Musashi Table is unique.
Please inquire for options currently available.
DATE OF DESIGN/MANUFACTURE
2006/2016
Named for the Japanese poet/philosopher/artist/warrior Miyamoto Musashi. The cast bases were carved in maple and cast in 93% recycled magnesium-aluminum alloy. They were then hand polished and rubbed with elixirs to patina the fresh metal, which was then waxed and used as bases for standing lamps and tables at East Hotel in 2003-4.
These variations are from a lounge created for Sotheby's New York in 2016
Their tops are hand-carved 4.5”-thick, spalted Sycamore from an old growth private forest in Michigan. Dried in a solar kiln. Hand rubbed natural oil finish. Made in Chicago for East Hotel, Hamburg, Germany
East Hotel is the reincarnation of the bombed out ruins of an old foundry in Hamburg, Germany as a boutique hotel featuring Asian-fusion menus.
DONUTS
The hotel’s center in an indoor/outdoor public space, a donut hole, created by sculpting brick and concrete out of the muscular foundry structure and excavating 24’ of earth from the yard separating the foundry ruins and the new guest room building…
Every detail of East’s architecture, art and design conveys the spirit of the old foundry and the surreality of a westerner’s first immersion in the east.
If architecture in frozen music (danke Göthe) thn ornament is the melody. It is the underlying concept which transforms structural rhythms, spatial and material harmonics and details into a meaningful personality which can create an emotional connection…the melody of architecture is its soul, the spirit of the place.
CREDITS
Photos: Table shots by John Stewart Clark. Photos of her design for Sotheby's Lounge in New York by Karen Lilly Mozer. Watercolor studies for the Musashi table by Jordan Mozer.
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