Lloyd Schwan Art for Sale at Auction

b. 1955 - d. 2001

Lloyd M. Schwan Jr., an American furniture and interior designer who brought an artist's eye for bold color and form and a lively wit to the craft of design in the 1980's and 90's, died on Jan. 19 at his home in Kutztown, Pa. He was 45.

He committed suicide, his family said.

The Crinkle Lamp he designed in 1996 with Lyn Godley, who was then his wife, was a steel lamp with a crushed-vinyl light shade. It is in the design collection of the Museum of Modern Art.

Paola Antonelli, curator of architecture and design at the museum, said, 'He was the first to set his foot down and create a fertile atmosphere for design here in New York,' at a time when Italians were being recognized as the masters of modern furniture design. His most distinctive designs resembled children's furniture for adults.

Born and reared in Chicago, Mr. Schwan studied fine arts at the Chicago Art Institute. With Ms. Godley he began his career as a designer in 1984 with their GodleySchwan Design. The company, which moved to New York the next year, initially produced art furniture pieces hand-made by the couple in their studio in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Cabinetry, tableware and lighting were eventually manufactured.


Mr. Schwan and Ms. Godley exhibited their expressionistic American pop-spirited work, with its chaotic colors and Saturday cartoonlike shapes, in Milan at the Salone di Mobile in 1988. The design's colors and forms were bright, basic and resistant to rules, both playful and sophisticated at a time when most American furniture was either dully traditional or dryly modern.

In an interview in 1999, Mr. Schwan told House Beautiful magazine: 'Color is evocative. If I use avocado green, I can take you to the 1960's. If I use orange, brown and yellow, in a minute we'll be back at Burger King.'

Mr. Schwan and Ms. Godley moved to Pennsylvania in 1994. Mr. Schwan began Lloyd Schwan Design in New York City in 1998, after the couple separated. They were divorced in 1999.

Mr. Schwan is survived by their three sons, Wolfgang, Otto and Gunnar, of Fleetwood, Pa.; his mother, Ruth Stanionis Schwan of McHenry, Ill.; two sisters; and a brother.

The designer seemed to find his perfect medium in the plastic laminates that formed the kitchen countertop landscape of the postwar American suburb of his childhood. He collected vintage sheets bought at auction.

'I grew up with a white laminate and chrome kitchen table, not to mention lime-green shag carpeting,' he told House Beautiful.

He called his laminates paintings, said Walter Chatham, an architect with whom Mr. Schwan worked. 'He didn't make the distinction between cabinetry and design and art and photography,' Mr. Chatham said. 'He mixed it all up, and that made it just delightful.'