Charles Gwathmey

Architect Charles Gwathmey died from esophageal cancer yesterday, the New York Times reports:

Mr. Gwathmey was part of a generation of architects who put their own aesthetic stamp on the “high Modernist” style developed in the early 20th century by Le Corbusier and others. Many of Mr. Gwathmey’s best buildings were houses. A series of wealthy clients — including Steven Spielberg, David Geffen and Jerry Seinfeld — chose him to create living spaces that were boldly geometric and luxuriously appointed, modern but certainly not spare.

Gwathmey Siegel & Associates, which he founded with Robert Siegel in 1968, was one of the rare architecture firms that maintained a thriving residential practice (its first apartment, in 1969, was for the actress Faye Dunaway) while also creating large buildings for schools, museums and private real estate developers.

Many blended effortlessly into the urban fabric. They included the International Center of Photography in Midtown Manhattan; the American Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria, Queens; an expansion of the Fogg Art Museum at Harvard; and dozens more.

Tony Rosenthal

Tony Rosenthal was 94 when he succumbed to a stroke last week, the Times reports:

In sheer visibility, Mr. Rosenthal occupied a leading place among contemporary artists. His five works of public sculpture in Manhattan, and dozens of similar works in Los Angeles, Philadelphia and other cities, guaranteed him a vast audience every week, yet he remained, if not obscure, much less than famous.

“He reminds me of a character actor,” said Joseph K. Levene, his agent. “You know the face but not the name. With him, you know the art.”

He was best known for “Alamo,” familiarly called “The Cube” and a neighborhood favorite since it was installed in 1967 as part of the city’s “Sculpture in Environment” program. All 25 works in the program were intended to be temporary installations, but after residents in the Astor Place area petitioned the city, “Alamo” stayed.

Theodore Niernberg

The founder of Dansk was 86. He died of pancreatic cancer, it was revealed in the New York Times:

An engineer by training, Mr. Nierenberg founded Dansk with his wife, Martha, in 1954, after a visit to Europe during which they were dazzled by work of young industrial designers. Begun in the garage of the couple’s home in Great Neck, on Long Island, Dansk operated for many years afterward from headquarters in Mount Kisco, N.Y.

Mr. Nierenberg sold the company in the mid-1980s; it is now part of the Lenox Corporation, a maker of tableware and giftware.

The Dansk style is known for its clean, sleek lines and use of teak and other exotic woods, often in combination with materials like stainless steel. Among the company’s best-known items have been salad bowls made from pieces of wood arrayed in a circle like barrel staves and heavy, brightly colored enameled steel pots with cruciform lids that doubled as trivets.

In 1958, The New York Times described Dansk tableware as comprising “some of the most popular accessories found in American homes today.”