Art Deco Sideboard by Harry & Lou Epstein, 1930s

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An art deco sideboard by harry & lou epstein. Burr walnut and satin birch veneered with original bakelite handles. Original … Read more An art deco sideboard by harry & lou epstein. Burr walnut and satin birch veneered with original bakelite handles. Original carved and bentwood legs over a burr walnut platform base. Central section opens to reveal three walnut fronted and mahogany lined drawers. To either side a shelved interior with a single fitted upper drawer to right hand side. Dimensions: h 107cm w 178cm d 62.5cm origin: english date: circa 1935 the story of twentieth-century british furniture is incomplete without harry and lou epstein, two brothers who transformed the landscape of english interior design between the world wars. Operating from the heart of london’s traditional cabinet-making district, they took the radical, avant-garde geometry born in paris and adapted it for british tastes. In doing so, they created a luxurious aesthetic that remains the definitive hallmark of english art deco today. The epstein story began a generation earlier in the late nineteenth century. Their father, morris solomon epstein, immigrated to england from poland and established a furniture-making workshop in shoreditch, east london—an area then world-famous for its dense colony of independent woodworkers and artisans. Growing up in this environment, all six of morris’s sons learned the nuances of fine timber and traditional construction. By 1929, brothers harry and lou officially stepped out on their own to form h. & l. Epstein. They divided their responsibilities based on their natural strengths: harry epstein acted as the creative visionary and primary designer. He possessed a sharp eye for modern scale, proportion, and continental trends. Lou epstein was the master craftsman, managing the workshop floor and ensuring the physical execution of harry's ambitious designs. While many contemporary british designers were still bound to the rustic ideals of the arts and crafts movement or traditional edwardian reproductions, the epstein brothers looked elsewhere. They drew heavy inspiration from the landmark 1925 paris exposition, adopting its fluid curves and lavish materials while stripping away some of europe’s more polarising, ultra-modern extremes. See less