Square Coffee Table, for the Susan Beckhard apartment, New York, circa 1965

For over forty years, Herbert Beckhard worked alongside the giant of International Modernism, Marcel Breuer. First joining Breuer as a volunteer in the early 1950s, Beckhard and his wife Eleanor survived on the income of Eleanor’s modeling career. As Breuer’s practice grew, Beckhard advanced from employee to associate and finally to partner, remaining with MBA (Marcel Breuer and Associates) until Breuer’s death in 1981. Over the course of their partnership, Breuer and Beckhard created over 30 houses and numerous large scale private and public buildings, defining America’s role in the advancement of Modernism in the 20th century. For nearly all of their residential projects, the architects would forge a personal relationship with the clients, customizing the project to their specific needs, especially as it relates to the way the houses would display art. Their houses, in turn became a definitive expression of the aesthetics and tastes of the owners. Breuer’s work in this period is personified by a rigorous approach to material, with an emphasis on stone: cast concrete, masonry and granite. The present lot perfectly illustrates the simple and elegant use of a singular material, where abstract, pure form intersects with elegant functionality.