Collection Spotlight Virtual Event with Silas Kopf and Jay Stanger
April 14, 4:00 pm E.S.T

Fuller Craft Museum offers unprecedented access to its permanent collection through a monthly interview series, Collection Spotlight. This online program features select artists from our collection in conversation with Artistic Director and Chief Curator Beth McLaughlin. Special guests will share insights about the objects, their broader creative practice, and the contemporary craft field.

Please join us on the second Wednesday of each month, live at 4pm, for Collection Spotlight as we bring works outside the museum walls and into viewers’ homes.

April 14, 2021: Silas Kopf & Jay Stanger

For nearly five decades, Jay Stanger has been creating functional artwork. Both in his furniture design and architectural sculpture, Stanger’s work has broken the barriers between fine art and craft. The result is a unique synthesis of geometry, movement, color and emotion.

In the mid-1970s, Jay Stanger attended the School of American Crafts at Rochester Institute of Technology, where he studied with William Keyser. He spent the following two years under the tutelage of David Powell at Leeds Design Workshops in Easthampton, Massachusetts. Stanger furthered his training at Boston University’s Program in Artisanry under Jere Osgood and Alphonse Mattia. Stanger has since become known for his use of bold colors and geometric shapes, as evidenced in the tour de force from Fuller Craft Museum’s permanent collection “Arched and Animated.”

Silas Kopf has been making studio furniture since 1973. He is a graduate of Princeton University with a degree in architecture. He was an apprentice to Wendell Castle for two years. In 1988 he was the recipient of a Craftsman’s Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. He used the Fellowship to study traditional marquetry methods at the École Boulle in Paris with Pierre Ramond. Subsequently Kopf had the opportunity to travel and study about marquetry and inlay in Italy, England, and Sweden, expanding his understanding of the European marquetry history of decorative arts. Kopf was named a Master of the Medium for 2015 by the James Renwick Alliance of the Smithsonian Institution.

Kopf incorporates a wide variety of techniques to decorate the furniture he both designs and builds. The standards are exacting and every attempt is made to build work of the highest caliber, creating work that is sought after by collectors. Most of the marquetry is made with wood, but occasionally other materials are used; brass, copper, aluminum, mother-of-pearl, abalone, and reconstituted stone. Kopf’s work is found in museums and private collections around the world. His shop is in Easthampton, Massachusetts.

A Zoom link will be delivered to you upon confirmation of registration. You must have Zoom installed on your computer or device to attend this workshop. Please note, confirmation emails with detailed information may sometimes end up in your junk mail or spam folder.

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