Modern Design 
12 May 2023
Modern Design 
555

Phillip Lloyd Powell

Cabinet

USA, c. 1990
walnut, ash, cocobolo, ebony, painted wood, gilt metal, mirrored glass 109 h × 76¼ w × 25 d in (277 × 194 × 63 cm)
estimate: $8,000–12,000
result: $6,930
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Cabinet features fifteen drawers with hardware from the Indictor Collection and four doors concealing open storage.
provenance: Acquired directly from the artist by Rina and Norman Indictor
literature: Paul Evans: Crossing Boundaries and Crafting Modernism, Kimmerle (ed.), ppg. 22-23 discuss the commission

This work will ship from Lambertville, New Jersey.

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David Rago on Phil Powell

An Exceptional Cabinet from the Indictor Collection

David Rago discusses lot 555, a large cabinet by Phillip Lloyd Powell from the Indictor Collection of New Hope Craft.

Craft and Friendship

The Rina and Norman Indictor Collection


This collection of furniture (lots 553-580) by Paul Evans and Phillip Lloyd Powell was acquired, and in many cases commissioned, by my parents, Rina and Norman Indictor, during the course of their almost 60-year marriage.

My mother is fond of saying that Paul and Phil saved their marriage. My parents met in person in their 20s, but their courtship was carried out largely by post. When my mother moved to Princeton in 1959 and saw the house her new husband rented for them, she sobbed bitterly. Their ideas about living spaces and interior design were, at the outset, incompatible, it seemed, and they could not agree on how to furnish their new home. One day, while driving through New Hope, they chanced upon Paul and Phil’s shop. For once, they agreed: they liked the chairs. Paul and Phil quickly sized up my parents and realized they were ready for some sessions of furniture therapy.


“How much money do you have?” Paul asked (I guess it was Paul; Phil didn’t like to talk about money very much). They worked within my parents’ paltry budget, advising them to return the carpets they had bought at a department store, replacing them with some inexpensive antiques. And they filled the downstairs of the house, which my parents set up as an art gallery, with furniture that they both loved.

The basis of my parents’ relationship was their shared love of art. The furniture drew them together, and the push towards antiques was the catalyst they needed to develop their aesthetic preferences together. They moved twice, first to Brooklyn, in 1963, and then to Manhattan in 1966, each time asking Paul and Phil to reinstall their works, adapting them to the new space.


My parents were especially close with Phil. Every so often he would come to the apartment in Manhattan, and they would talk about furniture they fantasized about. He would take measurements, and return a few months, or even a year or two later, with new surprises. My parents would occasionally give him small bits of metalwork or other antique items, and he would incorporate these into his works. Or he would come across the odd knickknack that reminded him of my parents and incorporate it into his designs.

How sad they both were when Phil died. My mother kept a picture of him on her desk; she mourned his passing, but I think that they both never imagined a time would come when they could no longer ask Phil to bring them new creations.

Nyr Indictor
Ossining, New York
April 4, 2023

In Situ: The Rina and Norman Indictor Collection

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My imagination runs over itself.

Phillip Lloyd Powell

Phillip Lloyd Powell 1919–2008

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Celebrated American furniture maker and designer Phillip Lloyd Powell was born in Germantown, Pennsylvania in 1919. Powell is best known for his innovative and hands-on approach to the production of studio furniture that disregarded industrial mass production methods in favor of creating limited runs of meticulously detailed, hand-carved pieces.

A self-taught natural at the craft of woodworking, Phillip Lloyd Powell began creating custom furniture for friends and family as a teenager. Looking to further develop his craft, he enrolled at Drexel Institute of Technology (now Drexel University) in 1939 to study mechanical engineering. His academic career was cut short in 1940 when he was drafted into the Army Air Corps. During his service as a meteorologist, stationed in Great Britain, Powell dreamed of returning home and settling in the quiet, river town of New Hope; his dream came to fruition in 1947 when he purchased an acre of land in the Bucks County artists’ community. Powell built his own home and earned a living selling works by noted mid-century designers such as Herman Miller and Isamu Noguchi.

At the urging of his friend George Nakashima, already an established studio furniture maker, Powell began designing his own furniture. He established a showroom in the heart of New Hope in 1953, open only by appointment and on Saturday evenings. In 1955, he began sharing his studio with Paul Evans. The two artists shared a creative space until 1966, growing their businesses and collaborating on select furniture designs. In addition to his detailed woodworking, Powell also created pieces in stone, metal and slate.

Though Powell began his work in the middle of the 20th century, his designs stand apart from the archetypal clean, sharp lines of many other mid-century makers. Along with his fellow Delaware Valley Modernists, George Nakashima and Wharton Esherick, he sought to elevate the natural form of wood and preferred organic curves and materials. A classic example of this is the singular, sculpted fireplace now on permanent exhibition, along with several other important pieces, at the Michener Museum of Art in Doylestown, Pennsylvania. But Powell’s work was also inspired by his love of world travel; The Powell Door, an intricately carved and brightly painted pine door (also at the Michener Museum of Art) suggests the influence of India, Spain, Portugal, Sicily, and Morocco.

Owing to the intricacies of his designs and his preference to work alone, Powell is estimated to have produced less than 1,000 pieces before his death in 2008.

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