William Earle
American
William Earle’s ‘hal’ table , created in 2000, ushered the faceted craze into furniture and lighting and has proven to be one of the most successful designs of all time. Since then, William has become probably the most prolific, and copied, contemporary American furniture designer. His work adorns the Penn, Yale and Harvard campus, the lobbies of Trump Tower and the Ritz-Carlton, is used for display on the floors of Niemann Marcus, Bergdorf Goodman and Bloomingdales, and in advertisements for Hugo Boss and Ralph Lauren. In 2007 the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art commissioned his ‘Nude’ inter-active table to sell from their museum store. He has been published in every architecture, design and décor magazine and journal in America, and in a conversation about European versus American design in Metropolis Magazine, Ellen Lupton, the curator of the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, referred to William as the American Minimalist. Unlike some others of like prominence, and still more who only aspire to it, William has never sold his brand to the corporate furniture world of overseas factories and design school grad ‘ghost’ designers. He has always been a sculptor before a brand, and still loves spending the day in the studio, where he works alone and everything is made to order. He genuinely feels honored whether one of his designs is chosen to be part of a designers project or an addition to someone’s home, and, because of such frequent requests, William signs each work and offers a personalized label.
