The Associated Press
Art Espenet Carpenter, a self-taught woodworker whose spare but sexy furniture received national acclaim and influenced generations of master craftsmen, has died at age 86.
Carpenter suffered a fatal heart attack Thursday at his home in Bolinas, the Marin County town he helped make a haven for artists after another house he spent eight years building and furnishing was featured in Life magazine in 1966, said his son, Tripp Carpenter.
“He didn’t like any of the furniture he had seen in his life, and he thought he could make something better and more beautiful,” Tripp Carpenter said of the eye-catching designs his father started turning out after World War II. “I think that was a freedom for him, not having any training, starting from scratch.”
Known professionally as Espenet, the elder Carpenter produced pieces that now are in the collections of the Smithsonian Institution were exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art and the Museum of Contemporary Crafts in New York City. In 1984, the California Legislature passed a resolution naming him a “living California treasure.”
Tripp Carpenter, who studied under his father and followed in his professional footsteps, said his father’s best-known piece was a “wishbone” chair. Although he never wanted to repeat himself as an artist, he made several hundred of the chairs to support himself and his family, the son said.
It is spare and sensual and now sold, when one can be found, for about $8,000, he said. It also runs counter to his father’s desire as an artist never to repeat a piece of work. He made several hundred of them and repeated others as well because he had to make a living, and his work was in such demand.
“One of his favorite lines, instead of ‘Time is money,’ was ‘Time is care,’ Tripp Carpenter said. “He would always spend a phenomenal amount of time on one piece to make sure it came out perfect, whether or not he was making any money at it.”
Born in New York in 1920, Carpenter enlisted in the Navy after graduating from Dartmouth College. After World War II, he promised himself he would spent the rest of his life doing something he enjoyed. Supporting himself on a $100 monthly GI Bill pension, he moved to San Francisco and turned out bowls while learning the woodworker’s craft.
Another of Carpenter’s well-known furniture designs was a desk that features scalloped seashell sides. In a 1983 interview for the DIY Network, Carpenter described his flowing furniture designs as “carpenter-style, practical and utilitarian.”
“I start from the idea of ‘How does it conform to the human body?'” he said. “There are not too many straight lines on the human body.”
Besides his son Tripp, Mr. Carpenter is survived by his daughter, Tori Carpenter, of Oakland. Services are pending.
