CASTLING

From top left: Tät-Tat Ornamental Pencils; Bauhaus ornaments; Banshu Hamano Ikenobo flower scissors; Man Ray Chess Set pieces; All AMEICO at Nasher Sculpture Center.

Nasher Sculpture Center collaborates with AMEICO to conquer holiday gift giving.

BY TERRI PROVENCAL

Nasher Sculpture Center has a new pop-up shop for the gifting season occupying the Corner Gallery at Flora and Olive streets through January 9, 2022. In the Nasher’s brilliant partnership with AMEICO, a Connecticut-based distributor catering to lovers of art and design, find inventive European-made gifts of jewelry, objects, notecards, historical reproductions, and other artisan-made products. They also offer a wonderful mix of Japanese and Korean contemporary crafts, like Banshu Hamono shears and razors, each a work of art. During the darker days of winter, when sake is in order, look to Japanese ceramics by Kumagai for soul-warming vessels.

“Given the national and international reputation of the Nasher as well as the timeless and stunning Renzo Piano building it is housed in, we could not be happier to have found such a good new ‛home’ in Dallas, albeit on a limited-time basis” says AMEICO’s founder Peter Kahane of the 20-year partnership with the Nasher.

Kahane splits his time between Switzerland and the US. Switzerland has birthed many iconic designers, including the famed architect Le Corbusier, who left a legacy of form and function as well as followers. That tenet threads through many of these Swiss brands. Consider the artfully utilitarian, like Tät-Tat’s laser-sculpted pencil set. These makers also create mobiles and charming garlands, a whimsical addition to any room. Plus, the Zurich-based company, founded by husband and wife, both former teachers, collaborates with social work programs and employs some 300 special-needs persons.

The reissue of the 1920 Man Ray Chess Set, based on the original from The Metropolitan Museum of Art, will delight titled players and woodpushers alike—or lovers of the highly COVID-streamed Queen’s Gambit. Other reproductions include Bauhaus ornaments and handcrafted marionettes by Dada artist Sophie Taeuber-Arp in collaboration with the Museum für Gestaltung Zürich. AMEICO’s headquarters is somewhat of a reissue itself; a two-story brick and limestone, it was previously the home of the Southern New England Telephone Company, built by Dowling & Bottomley Co.

Other artisan goods include useful pickups like reading glasses from French eyewear brand IZIPIZI, La Mollla’s curly necklace made entirely out of springs, and the Siri Siri jewelry collection named after the Swahili word for chain.

And like all things at the Nasher, the pop-up is greatly considered. AMEICO’s curation is lovingly interspersed with finds from the late Donald Fowler, the Nasher Store’s former director of retail and a multidisciplinary artist whose charisma enveloped chance encounters into his world of friendships. Following his passing, the museum reimagined the shop space into the Nasher Windows gallery honoring his memory. Kristen Cochran’s site-specific neon fare well was a poignant reminder fashioned after his handwriting, remembering Fowler and all those who we lost to the tragedy-ridden 2020. On the eve of the pop-up opening in November, AMEICO’s director of retail stores Daniel Basiletti recalled “I remember Donald really fondly. I thought he was really sharp and quite clever; he had a good way of merchandising and positioning products.”

Stuck on the hardest person on your gift list? Fowler was a lover of books, and here an assortment is interspersed throughout, including many art titles, collection tomes, and Nasher Sculpture Center exhibition publications such as Betye Saar: Uneasy Dancer and Isamu Noguchi: A Sculptor’s World.

Pop into this pop-up without paying admission fees. P