Exhibition celebrates cabinetmaker Duncan Phyfe

New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art will open the exhibit "Duncan Phyfe: Master Cabinetmaker," Dec. 20 in New York. It is the first retrospective on Phyfe in 90 years.

On view will be furniture produced in Phyfe’s Fulton Street workshops that once stood on the site of the former World Trade Center. The full chronological sweep of his long and distinguished career will be featured, including examples of his best-known furniture from the period 1805-1820, which was influenced heavily by early English Regency design; his more opulent, monumental, and archaeologically correct Grecian style of the late 1810s and 1820s, sometimes referred to as American Empire; and his sleek, minimalist late work of the 1830s and 1840s known as the Grecian Plain style, based largely on French Restoration furniture design.

The exhibition brings together nearly 100 works from private and public collections throughout the United States. Highlights of the exhibition include some never-before-seen documented masterpieces and furniture that has descended directly in the Phyfe family, as well as the master cabinetmaker’s own chest of woodworking tools.

A special feature about the exhibition will appear at www.metmuseum.org.