Architect Frank Gehry has gained international renown as an innovative designer of private and public buildings (Locally, his most recent effort is the spectacular new Frederick R. Weisman Art Museum at the University of Minnesota). Yet it was his furniture designs that first brought him national attention. In the early 1970s, he used laminated sheets of corrugated cardboard to create a line of chairs, stools, tables, shelves, and other household pieces, transforming a disposable material into furniture suitable for most American homes. Sturdy and practical, yet whimsical, Gehry's Easy Edges line, produced during the early 1970s, was immediately successful. His recent Cross Check chairs are made of sturdy bentwood maple and inspired by the forms of bushel baskets.

In the early 1980s, Gehry turned to nature for inspiration. He was particularly interested in fish, "fascinated," he later said, "with the perfection and variety of their forms." He has designed lamps, sculptures, architectural columns, and even entire buildings in the shape of fish. The 22-foot-tall Standing Glass Fish (1986), in the Garden's Cowles Conservatory, is made of hundreds of glass scales bolted to a wooden framework.
 
 

Standing Glass Fish 1986
wood, glass, steel, silicone

acquired from the architect, 1986
(gift of Anne Pierce Rogers in honor of her grandchildren, Anne and Will Rogers 86.68)