12/24/2023 0 Comments Matt doner timber framerTo build on this precious land, the Abesses turned to an old family friend, James Merrick Smith, and his partner, Hal Burchfield. The Minguren I end table and Long chair with an English oak burl arm are nestled in a corner of the study, along with two additional pieces by George Nakashima, a Cross-Legged desk, and a Kent Hall lamp with a walnut-root frame and rice- paper shade. (They subsequently placed a conservation easement on all but five acres.) Some years later, they were able to add eight more contiguous acres to bring the total to eighteen. They bought it, though not without some bidding drama. Fast forward a few years, and the same ten-acre plot came up for sale again, this time with a driveway already cut through the woods, sparing Leonard the heartache of having to cut through the property. And Leonard Abess does not like to cut down trees. The Abesses found the site more than twenty years ago and were about to buy it when they discovered that the necessary permits were not in place, and more, the only access was through the woods, which meant cutting down trees. The bed was made by Jeff Scurlock from a fallen woman’s tongue tree.Ī long saga led to the acquisition of the land, one of the last and most important tropical hardwood hammocks in the Keys. The seating comprises George Nakashima’s Cushion lounge chairs (1987) and a pair of Armless Cushion settees. The living room features a George Nakashima Conoid dining table and chairs (1984) as well as a pair of his English walnut and rosewood Kornblut cases (1984) and a Conoid room divider (1984) behind the lounge chairs. The art in the guest house includes Michele Oka Doner’s cast-bronze sculpture called Root. During the same time period, they grew to know Robert Aibel, whose Moderne Gallery in Philadelphia is a leading source for works by George Nakashima. They managed to secure an appointment with Mira (though there was a long waiting list), in part because they wanted a very big dining table, and at that particular moment she had the right wood for it they traveled to the studio in New Hope, Pennsylvania, to pick out the exact slab and were able to commission dining chairs from the same tree. Then Matthew (he is the middle child of three with an older sister, Ashley, and a younger brother, Brent) went to the University of Pennsylvania, which put them in Nakashima territory. The wall at the edge was made by Vermont stonemason Benjamin Fuller, who used the age-old method of building without mortar.Īs Jayne tells it, she had been looking at Nakashima from a distance-books, magazine and newspaper clippings, and more. The Abess family mandate to artist Michele Oka Doner when she designed their east-facing Sunrise Terrace in local cut keystone was that she could not move a tree. Together Leonard and Jayne have bought and commissioned art that, for the most part, speaks to their interests and passions, and includes major works by Ursula von Rydingsvard and Michele Oka Doner, as well as John James Audubon (Florida birds), João Barbosa Rodrigues (tropical palms), Clyde Butcher, Esther Shalev-Gerz, George Rickey, and Miami artist Eugene Massin. Jayne Harris Abess, a long-time weaver with a strong interest in the arts, led the family to assemble its extraordinary collection of Nakashima. An entrepreneur and former banker, he is a known conservationist who cultivates a wide range of trees. “Most people want a beach house,” says son Matthew, an independent curator and part of the second generation, “but my parents built a ‘tree house.’ ”įor Leonard Abess, trees are a passion and a pursuit. In many ways, it is an island within an island. The hardwood hammock (it is basically a coastal tropical forest) separates the compound from the roadway to the west. None of this can be seen from the water trees form a kind of scrim, filtering the view. A George Nakashima Minguren I end table (1971) and Long chair with an English oak burl arm (1965) furnish the study in one of the connected pavilions that make up the family compound in the Florida Keys.
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