Between 1960 and 1980, New York's artists moved into the upper floors of disused SoHo factories, south of Houston Street: 200-square-metre floorplates, cast-iron columns, huge windows, no partitions. They lived there illegally, then the city legalised it, then the galleries arrived, then the prices. The look was born of scarcity: you furnished with whatever was lying around the studios.
The pieces
The Tolix chair A (Xavier Pauchard, 1930s), folded sheet steel: around £300 new, between £100 and £300 vintage, the subject of a Scan on our pages. The Jieldé workshop lamp (Jean-Louis Domecq, Lyon, 1950): between £400 and £800 new, between £300 and £600 vintage. A workbench or a solid-wood farmhouse table, between £500 and £2,000. The String shelving by Nils Strinning (1949), a few hundred pounds per module: we gave it a Scan of its own.
The book
“Loft Living” by Sharon Zukin (1982), the New York sociologist: the book that described, in real time, how the artist's studio becomes a piece of real estate.
The album
“The Velvet Underground & Nico” (1967), produced by Andy Warhol, recorded by a band that rehearsed in a Manhattan loft. Dry, metallic, unheated. “Horses” by Patti Smith (1975), the next generation, the same temperature.
The film
“Ghost” by Jerry Zucker (1990): Molly's loft, on Prince Street, potter's wheel, brick, freight lift, is the one that exported the look around the world. “After Hours” by Martin Scorsese (1985) shows the same SoHo by night, before the shops.
The palette and the materials
Exposed brick, cast-iron columns, raw steel, wired glass, polished concrete, worn leather; solid wood for a worktop. Workshop light, articulated, never decorative. To achieve it without copying: a single raw material per surface, furniture on castors, and leaving empty space.
The address
The Donald Judd Home and Studio, at 101 Spring Street, an 1870 cast-iron building bought by the artist in 1968 and preserved by his foundation, furnished with his pieces and those of his friends; visits are by reservation.
Spotted a sheet-steel chair or a workshop lamp in this spirit? Scan it on Beyit: the original workshop, the period, the value — and the copy that gives itself away at the weld.
