Vintage Postmodern Swid Powell For Calvin Klein Silver Plate Bowl With Glass Insert, c1980’s. This chic and modernist 1980s silver plate bowl and or barware is marked Calvin Klein- Swid Powell. The bowl was manufactured in Hong Kong. The bowl has a lovely glass insert which has Calvin Klein engraved on the base. It has a clean and forever look. This is perfect for all your entertaining. Diameter of Bowl: 6. Overall the condition is very good to excellent. The silver plate bowl is in great condition with some very, very minor surface scratches in accordance with light use. On the interior of the bowl there are a couple of very small spots where the silver plate has got a little thin but they are very small and hardly noticeable. The glass insert bowl is in excellent condition with no chips or cracks, there are a couple of minor scratches in the bottom of the bowl. These minor imperfections with both are very hard to photograph highlighting that they are minor and commensurate with age and light wear, after all this piece is over 40 years old. I must remark on how amazing the fit is between both pieces, they come together just so perfectly, a piece of engineering as well as design. It truly is a beautiful design piece! History of Swid Powell. The New York City based tableware company Swid Powell produced some of the most distinctive china and silver of the 1980s in collaboration with international architects and designers. It enjoyed renewed attention in 2007, when the Yale University Art Gallery mounted the exhibition The Architects Table: Swid Powell and Postmodern Design, celebrating the donation to its collection of the company’s papers. Swid Powell was established in 1982 by Nan Swid and Addie Powell, who met while working at the modernist furniture company Knoll. Their idea was to translate the aesthetics of postmodern design from the skyscraper to the dining table, and they brought into their preliminary discussions nine prominent architects. Among these were Philip Johnson, Stanley Tigerman and Richard Meier, all of whom expressed enthusiasm about making their designs accessible beyond the small group with the funds to commission buildings from them. The first Swid Powell collection was launched in 1984, accompanied by a bold, graphic print campaign in keeping with the eras advertising trends. The companys best-known collaboration was with Robert Venturis Philadelphia-based firm, Venturi, Scott Brown and Associates, whose patterns particularly the floral design Grandmother inspired by a tablecloth Venturi saw at the home of a colleague’s grandmother adorned Swid Powell porcelain as well as furniture and clothing. The firm also partnered with architect Richard Meier, whose geometric designs were inspired in part by those of Josef Hoffmann and Charles Rennie Mackintosh. Swid Powell also worked with Arata Isosaki, Ettore Sottsass, Zaha Hadid and George Sowden, creating products that incorporated the bright, saturated colours and popular and historical references, like Classical columns, that animated postmodern design in the 1980s. The Chicago Blue china pattern designed for Swid Powell by the firm Gwathmey Siegel references the distinctive patterns of Frank Lloyd Wrights leaded glass windows.
