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INTRODUCTION
Lloyd Schwan was brought up in Chicago, the child of a Lithuanian mother with something of the gypsy in her. His rationally-minded, technically-trained father, of German origin, was a machine builder. "The need to be fully understood makes me work a lot. I turn out hundreds of drawings in a very short time. I concentrate on myself in order to find the basic elements of a language which represents me, because I'm looking for authenticity, not consensus."
It is difficult to associate Lloyd Schwan's "Help Bookshelf" produced by the Swedish company Box Design and presented at the 1998 Milan Furniture Fair, as part of the Swecode&Friends exhibition, or the one designed for Totem and presented at ICFF in New York last May, with the trend-setting polychrome furniture of his first NEw York period, which brought the young American fame in Europe. Yet although Schwan has become more Europeanised, an inevitable consequence of his work for italian companies like Cappellini, one cannot talk of two distinct periods of his output. "I haven't changed" asserts Schwan.
"I don't read magazines and I don't worry about what other designers are doing. I don't follow either trends or marketing. I was trained as an artist and that's how I see myself. I'm an artist who is also a designer and such, I have more freedom than an industrial designer. There are no artists among Italian designers, except perhaps for Paolo Pallucco, who has disappeared from the scene. Most of them are theorists, like Andrea Branzi."
Schwan undoubtedly has an artistic temperament, but the situation in New York also has a profound influence on his work. The city is an important center for contemporary art, but there are very few small or medium-sized companies willing to take a chance on investing in the work of artists/designers. Those who design innovative and unconventional furniture are obliged to make them themselves, which inevitably leads to artists producing one-off pieces, even though they have designed them beforehand.
For Schwan, designing furniture is a compromise between his artistic training and his desire to be an architect. Brought up in Chicago, a kind of living museum of contemporary architecture, he regards architecture, particularly the work of Mies Van der Rohe, as an integral part of himself. "Even if one neither thinks about nor studies architecture, one feels it within oneself", he declares.
"I seek to express myself through my work as a designer, even though I feel that I am not completely understood. In general, unlike art, questions are not always asked about the meaning of design. A piece of furniture is supposed to look good and be practical and that's all. My furniture is art and I want it to be recognized as such." Since he makes no distinction between creating furniture, paintings or sculptures, Schwan combines his furniture with his own paintings and drawings, just a few essential pieces, in different ways each time, in order to create a new artistic expression each time, in order to create a new artistic expression each time. His most recent pictures are expanses of monochrome laminate. The use laminate of is a definite conceptual choice. Laminate never fades, unlike paint colors, which change with time. It is consistent and represents something definitive. Schwan possesses no fewer than 2000 laminate samples from Wilsonart International, one of the world's largest manufacturers, with whom he works.
Since Schwan considers himself an artist, he regards his furniture as "works of art" even those produced industrially by European manufacturers. He believes in the value of his furniture, in contrast to many designers who consider themselves creators of ambiences and lifestyles.
Recently, Schwan designed the Form and Function showroom in New York where he arranged the partitions an plinths so as to highlight each piece of furniture on display. "I deliberately created a shop resembling a museum, to emphasize the value of design, so that buyers will understand that they are
dealing with objects worthy of the same respect as paintings or sculptures."
Lloyd Schwan and his drawings are currently in Italy, where he will meet several major companies. He is aware that it will not be easy to enter into a dialogue with them, due to the fact Italian companies are used to working with designers who are part of the system and capable of appropriate responses to public demands. "For my part, when dealing with manufacturers, I place great emphasis on the freedom of expression vital for artistic work. I can adapt my designs to different manufacturing processes and am capable of working with plastic, as I did for Cappellini, with wood, as for Box Design and metal, without losing my identity, because my artistic vocabulary is very wide."
A surprising feature of a fundamentally limited panorama, characterized by very personal, repetitive an easily identifiable signals, is the varied nature of Schwan's artistic vocabulary, which always manages to retain an identity. This identity comes from Schwan's particularly independent work, which is far removed from influences and closer to art than design, even though he is now part of the European design scene. It is very difficult to place his work in a specific stylistic category, as some have tried to do and very difficult to know where he fits into the "history" of design, forever trying to make people fit into geographical and cultural pigeonholes. Schwan is profoundly American, with a strong attachment to New York, where he works, but he also has a European side, very much at ease in the Swedish and Italian design systems. He enjoys playing with his own unique flexibility and is right to do so, given that he possesses rare qualities of dialogue and understanding for someone so determined to assert his own artistic language, without compromise. Schwan is willing to sacrifice a certain understanding of his work, as long as his artistic freedom is not limited.
Cristina Morozzi.
Lloyd Schwan formed the company Godley-Schwan with his partner Lyn Godley in 1984 for the purpose of designing and producing functional art objects. Their products have included jewelry, desk and tabletop accessories, lighting, and furniture and nonfunctional art. Both of the founders are artists with backgrounds in painting, sculpture and design.
The designs they produce have been carried in galleries to department stores across the United States, Japan, Europe, South America, Australia and Canada. Their furniture and lighting has been published and recognized around the world.
In 1989 they were the only American design company to exhibit at the Milano Furniture Fair in Italy.
Godley Schwan's smaller products are shown at the New York Gift Fair, Accent on Design Section, where in August 1988 they were given Best Booth Award.
In January 1989 were awarded for Excellence in Product and Design for their leaning wall units and again in January 1995 for their vinyl table lamps. They have also designed custom lighting and furniture for private clients, both residential and commercial.
Among the list is the E-Te store in Tokyo, display fixtures for Barney's New York and the Geoffrey Beene Shop, and lighting for Sony, Warner Bros. and Entertainment Television. They are also working with a number of companies licensing furniture designs.
In 1994 they moved from New York City to a 19th century mill in rural Pennsylvania where they reside with their three sons, Wolfgang, Otto, Gunnar. They continue to develop and produce product.
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