Passion Investments: Collectibles
Bowling for Dollars
Marisa Bartolucci
09/01/2005

Say “turned wood” and many people think of clunky teak salad bowls carved by hobbyists on their basement lathes. But for cognoscenti the term conjures images of wooden vessels of breathtaking beauty, technical invention—and very interesting investment potential. Such is the paradox of turned wood. Out of a humble pastime has emerged an art form, astonishing in its variety and, lately, the values of the most superlative pieces. And all of this has happened in the past 40 years.

MELVIN LINDQUIST'S Hopi Bowl (Natural Top), 1999.
“It’s an exciting time to collect. The field is still young, yet it has enough history for us to know who the early masters are,” explains Kevin Wallace, an independent studio craft critic and curator. Wallace has helped shepherd this American-born movement since its dramatic flowering in the 1990s, when he served as creative director of Del Mano, the Los Angeles crafts gallery that is arguably the leading venue for the field. During the 1990s, a host of monographs on significant collections were published, and museums across the country began acquiring works in earnest. Today, the Renwick Gallery in Washington, D.C., the Mint Museum of Craft + Design in Charlotte, N.C., the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Arizona State University Museum in Tempe all have large collections.

“We’ve loved being part of the development, this sudden renaissance of wood turning as an art,” says Jane Mason, who along with her husband, Arthur, a retired lawyer, has donated their influential collection to the Mint. Within a year of happening upon the seminal traveling exhibition The Art of Turned Wood Bowls at the Renwick in 1986, the couple quickly amassed more than 100 pieces. (Their collection has now passed the 600 mark.) As Arthur jokingly puts it, “I never met a wooden bowl I didn’t like.” He quickly adds, “Fortunately my wife has.” Indeed, thanks to Jane, the couple have been disciplined in their choices, having decided from the start only to purchase works that would someday be museum-worthy.

VALUE JUDGMENT
The past four decades have seen a slow but steady rise in the field of turned wood. Ranging from tiny macadamia bowls to vessels large enough to hide a small child, these diverse pieces attract a small but fervent group of aficionados. New collectors can enter the field for as little as several hundred dollars, while the most prized pieces fetch upward of $50,000 on the rare occasions they are for sale.
You would expect such a couple, already seasoned collectors with a home adorned with works by important modern artists such as George Grosz, Käthe Kollwitz, Joan Miró and George Segal, to be more tempered in their enthusiasm for an art form that in the late 1980s was more frequently found in makeshift studios and craft shows than posh galleries. But for them that was part of the excitement. This was a new aesthetic frontier. There was, too, the allure of wood itself, its tactile materiality, its still vibrant connection to nature. And finally, there was the pleasure of forging friendships with an unsung band of marvelously talented artists.

All these elements continue to draw collectors to a field that is growing at a phenomenal rate, not just in this country, but now in Europe and Australia. While prices for the most prized pieces have risen substantially over the years, turned wood continues to be attractively priced. Important works by acknowledged masters peak at about $50,000, while fine pieces by emerging and even mature talents may be had for several hundred dollars upward into the $20,000 range.

Rooted in Modernism
Ironically, James Prestini, the turner credited with elevating the wooden vessel to an art form, is said to have abandoned the craft in the early 1950s because he failed to make any money with his work. Prestini studied design under László Moholy-Nagy, one of the founders of the Bauhaus. Prestini made the Bauhaus ethos—to dissolve the boundaries between the applied and fine arts—his own in his turnings of vessels and platters. New York’s Museum of Modern Art included his creations in a major exhibition in 1949.

Turned wood’s other early pioneers were Bob Stocksdale, Rude Osolnik, Melvin Lindquist and Ed Moulthrop. Although from disparate backgrounds and working independently and unknown to each other in different regions of the country, they crafted vessels that share an innate modernist aesthetic. Their purist works, along with those of Prestini, became the standard to which future generations of turners would aspire—and rebel against.

MELVIN LINDQUIST'S Flare Mouth Vase, 1999; Mark Lindquist’s Ascending Conical Vessel, 1994; Bob Stocksdale’s Untitled 1986; and Mark Lindquist’s Ascending Bowl 1998 #1.

Stocksdale turned taut, simple forms to best display the varied grains and tones of the exotic woods with which he loved to work. He took inspiration for his perfect vessels from the elegant ceramic tea bowls of China and Japan. Osolnik, by contrast, was an inventor, experimenting with different techniques, tools and forms, as was Lindquist. Both men relished the role of chance in creation, and therefore preferred deformed, damaged and castoff pieces of wood, allowing these imperfections to determine the shapes of their vessels. If their objects approach the sculptural in their expressive use of form, Moulthrop’s do so on a grand scale—some of his works are so large that small children can nestle inside them. Moulthrop broke with wood-turning tradition by chemically treating his wood, so that the thick-walled vessels would not crack as they dried. He then coated the pieces with epoxy, bestowing a gorgeous glasslike sheen to their grained surfaces.

Prices for these first-generation masters range dramatically—when you can find them, that is. Most of Prestini’s works are in museum collections. When a rare piece comes on the market, it can go for anywhere from $3,000 to $8,000. Del Mano Gallery has acquired a small vessel by Stocksdale, about 6 inches in diameter, in macadamia, a signature wood, pricing it at $3,000. Atlanta’s Signature gallery recently sold a Moulthrop tulipwood bowl, 10 inches in diameter, for $9,500. A superb example of his giant-sized vessels might fetch as much as $50,000.

In turned wood’s evolution from craft to sculpture, there may be no more significant figure than Lindquist’s son, Mark. When he was just 29, the Metropolitan Museum of Art acquired one of his works. At the time, the museum had only one other example of turned wood: a piece by Prestini. Mark had grown up turning wood with his father. Yet after studying sculpture in college, he decided to throw pots. 
When Mark returned to the lathe in the late 1970s, it was with fresh vision and skills. Instead of crafting polished forms, he gouged and roughened their surfaces. By the late 1980s, he was assembling wood totems, some more than 6 feet tall. Mark sells his and his late father’s work directly to collectors through his studio. While a few small pieces by Mel may still be had for under $10,000, most of his works, like his son’s, now range in price from $10,000 to $50,000.

Timber Futures
David Ellsworth, another giant among the second-generation turners, also has a background in sculpture and ceramics. His knowledge of fine art and skill as a potter are manifest in how he conceives and creates his vessels, which are renown for their tiny openings and paper-thin walls. He often scorches and paints his wood. Del Mano Gallery is selling a 16-by-16-inch scorched sphere from his Solstice series, for $25,000. Ellsworth is also known for his miniature Spirit Vessels, a few inches tall. They are priced from $2,000.

TODD HOYER'S Peeling Orb, 1987 is made of burned, lathe-turned mesquite.
Today myriad stylistic currents run through the field. David McFadden, the chief curator of New York’s Museum of Arts and Design, counsels aspiring collectors to do a lot of looking, before beginning to buy. “It’s easy to be swayed by a single piece,” he explains, “but [in this field] that’s just the tip of the iceberg.” Within the realm of the decorative, works range from the exquisitely patterned, segmented bowls of Mike Shuler to the stately, ornately carved vessels of Michelle Holzapfel, one of the field’s few female artists. Shuler’s bowls can fetch up to $8,000. Holzapfel’s pieces can range from $8,000 to $16,000. A testament to just how far turned wood has traveled since its craft fair days, the work of both these artists is represented by Barry Friedman, a tony decorative arts gallery on Manhattan’s Upper East Side.

Then there are the sculptural works of artists like Todd Hoyer. Charred and weathered, sometimes bound with rusty wire, his deeply personal pieces defy all expectations of polished beauty, radiating instead a raw emotional power. This is especially extraordinary when you consider that they are rarely more than 2 feet high. Works by Hoyer at the Cervini-Haas Gallery/Gallery Materia, in Scottsdale, Ariz., another leading venue for turned wood, run from $2,500 to $6,000. Other turned wood artists and their works are more formalist in their concerns. Stoney Lamar, a former assistant to Mark Lindquist, employs a multi-axis lathe technique to carve asymmetric sculptures with layered planes. While abstract, their forms suggest canyon landscapes shaped by the rush of wind and water. Lamar’s works, seldom more than 3 feet high, are priced up to $8,000 at the Blue Spiral Gallery in Asheville, N.C.

While there is no question as to the finest of turned wood’s creators, the field’s long-term investment prospects remain uncertain. There are no definitive facts and figures, as the secondary market is only now developing. Important collections have yet to make their way to the auction block because so many prominent collectors have chosen to gift their collections to museums to promote the field. Yet that in itself is encouraging. Unlike the high-flying contemporary art market, turned wood’s collectors are buying for love rather than speculation. Meanwhile, they continue to expand in number and diversity. Mark Lindquist reports that collectors from as far away as Paris, London and Hong Kong have beaten a path to his rural New Hampshire studio to purchase works.

One thing is certain: While fashions in art may come and go, the intrinsic beauty and technique that define turned wood are enduring—and this appears to be its golden age. 

Marisa Bartolucci lives in New York, where she writes on a variety of cultural subjects.

Images by Mel Lindquist Images: John Mcfadden, Lindquist Studios; Lark Lindquist Images: Mark Lindquist, Lindquist Studios; Bob Stocksdale Images: The Mint Museum of Craft + Design, Charlotte, N.C.