Incollect Magazine - Issue 9

86 www.incollect.com people walk in the front door of an old house and see contemporary art and furnishings. It brings these old places new life and I find clients really resonate with this.” Springer's innovative approach to designing and his ability to blend traditional and modern elements made him a household name throughout the 1970s and ‘80s when nearly any high-end interior designer with a modernist sensibility was buying Karl Springer furniture. His celebrity client list included everyone who was anyone: Princess Diana, Jackie Onassis, Diana Ross, and Frank Sinatra. He had showrooms in major American cities and beyond, and at his peak, in Germany and Japan from where he issued a stream of objects, most of them custom commissions. There was little in Springer’s background that prepared him for a life at the pinnacle of the design world. He was born in 1931 in East Germany, and the family escaped to the West before the borders were closed. He met an American soldier stationed in Germany and together they moved to New York in the late 1950s where he found work in merchandising at Lord & Taylor. Springer was talented but also lucky; he had a friend who worked at Hermès who asked him to use his skills in leather bookbinding to fabricate bound leather seating booklets for dinner parties to sell through the Hermès store. They were a hit, and Springer soon started wrapping small objects — picture frames, mirrors, and boxes — in leather and skins for sale at boutiques. Springer rapidly expanded his repertoire of designs to include furniture, usually wrapped in increasingly exotic and lacquered skins: goat, lizard, alligator, shagreen, and python. His first big market success was his wrapped telephone tables — small two- tiered side tables meticulously covered in leather or skins with brass castors. He did his own work initially, but as demand grew he set up workshops and employed skilled craftsmen to assemble the pieces to his exacting specifications. He hired specialists in lacquering, gilding, leather wrapping, and woodworking, locally at first, and later, around the world. By 1969 he had opened a showroom on East 61st Street in New York and counted Wallis Simpson, Duchess of Windsor (and wife of former King Edward VIII) among his early supporters. Springer’s designs remain much sought after today, though, as with most successful vintage markets discerning what is an original Springer creation, a later authorized reissue, or an outright copy, requires knowledge and expertise. Springer died in 1991 and the company he founded continued until 1993, when it filed for bankruptcy and the trademark was sold to a former Springer employee, designer Mark Eckman. Eckman later reissued several iconic designs, in some cases made by Springer’s former craftsman, which have now made their way into the secondary market. Coffee table completely wrapped in brown python with polished chrome steel details, 1972. From Liz O’Brien Gallery on Incollect.com.