When the sun shines through the glass gable of the house of Diane and Marc Grainer in Potomac, Maryland, Its content seems to come to life. The sculptural chairs throw strange shadows that dance on the floor of the living room and a giant ceramic totem of twisted characters shine in the light. It is as if objects could start talking.
“You can never feel alone here,” explains Diane of the 1980s house designed by the architect late Elias Charuhas, surrounded by large trees. “Not even during the pandemic. We were lucky to be surrounded by so many friends, because I think of the pieces.”
Over several decades, the granulomers filled their ceramic and furniture house with mainly British artists, notably Alison Britton, Gordon Baldwin and John Makepeace. It looks like a museum, with large white and double rooms and many works displayed in custom cupboards and on bases, shelves, tables, walls, floors and ceilings – and next to bathroom washbasins. Even the couple's beds and night tables were a special commission for Canadian designer Peter Pierobon. “I joke that we fall asleep every night with him,” explains Marc.
It is a testimony of the ladder of the collection that the house feels so full, despite more than 350 works of art having recently been removed while the couple anticipates the reduction in staff. The only indices that are missing, if you look strong enough, are a few nails that exceed the walls and the strange empty base. An art cache will be exhibited at the Maak ceramic auction house during the London Craft Week this month (May 10-15), before a two-part sale. Even more was given to museums. “It was a huge key to saying goodbye to the works,” added Diane, “but we are happy that other people can take advantage of their business.”
Many larger pieces, suitable only to a house of this size, had to go there, but the couple kept their favorites from each artist. Filling the sculptural curves of the house, the pointed corners and the glazed living spaces, the works – such as the face black cat without Richard Slee who looks through a window, moving away the unwanted guests – give off ironic humor. A bit like their owners.
Despite being “institutional manufacturers”, such as the curator and author Glenn Adamson called them, neither Diane nor Marc have training in the arts. Diane was an English teacher and Marc co -founded the Tarp of customer services before retiring in 2021. But after being renowned for the collection they built during their free time, they both took roles in the big institutions: Diane was president of the non -executive president of the American Craft.
It was during business trips to the United Kingdom that Marc started collecting, starting with a sandstone jug richly textured with Robert Fournier from an Oxford gallery now closed in 1978. “Instead of taking suitcases, he took boxes filled with bubble paper and came with perhaps 25 pieces at a time,” said Diane, who is dressed). She quickly equaled her enthusiasm.
At the time, ceramics was not the art medium of great value that they are today, says Marc, and work by the best British artists was a third of the price of a “second -order” piece of an American artist. He says that free tuition fees in Great Britain at the time, compared to exorbitant university costs in the United States, gave artists more freedom to take risks.
Alison Britton, Carol McNicoll and Jacqueline Poncelet, for example, experimenting with the medium, rejecting the orthodoxies of traditional British studio potters such as Bernard Leach. “I consider that Aison as an abstract expressionist,” he said, pointing towards two asymmetrical forms and built on the slab mounted on bases on the ground floor, with gestural brands of slipping on their surfaces. “She uses the pot as canvas and a sculpture.”
An irreverent sequence is seen throughout the collection, thanks to artists such as Carol McNicoll. When Marc asked McNicoll to make a chandelier above his desk on the gallery overlooking the dining room, she suspended six figures cast at a metal opening alongside found glass objects – without a single source of light.
A taste acquired, maybe? “It's a dark piece,” accepts Marc, “but it made me happy because Carol was a hoe.” Diane prefers objects with an optimistic feeling. “I like the work that makes me feel comfortable and warm,” she said, pointing a bulbous pot by the late Waisel Cooper, with a rough and textured surface.
It was their collection that brought them to this house. In the 1980s, Diane joined Marc in London during the summer holidays with their two boys, leading to Cornwall for beach trips and the Potters studios. “The boys had to share the rear seat with ceramics,” she says. They quickly started buying furniture, such as the Phoenix II 1998 chair by John Makepeace, included in the Maak sale, made from old oaks and Burr Elm.
The couple acquired pieces with such enthusiasm that in the 1990s, they had exceeded their previous house in Falls Church, Virginia. “We had ceramics on the sofa and the dining table,” says Diane. “Marc woke me up early in the morning in 1998 saying:” I just saw the house of my dreams in a local real estate television program “. We called the real estate agent that day.
Charuhas – Better known to design metros and embassies – built the house for his family but died shortly after. He won an American Institute of Architecture Award 1986 for “distinctive residential architecture”. “We call it the false house Richard Meier”, explains Marc, stressing how Charuhas borrowed curves and geometric shapes typical of Meier buildings, overwhelming them with postmodern frills such as glass in red metal glass. “We went to Getty Museum (designed by Meier) to Los Angeles shortly after having moved here and I continued to see pieces from our house,” explains Diane.
Its curved gallery level and its fluid spiral staircase made it the perfect receptacle for art. Even the sauna and the laundry were filled. “It is ironic that the original owners of the house have a minimum aesthetic,” explains Diane.
The high ceilings meant that they could acquire works such as the 14 -feet high totem at the bottom of the stairs: a lush mass of heads and members produced by Sunkoo Yuh, born in Korea in 1999, which refers to its diasporic existence. The play – which will soon be at the Everson Museum of Art, Syracuse – has a strange and ugly beauty. “Ceramics has become too boring and tasteful today,” says Marc. “In recent decades, people have lost the ability to do things in hand, so the support of accomplished manufacturers is important.” Five percent of the auction products will go to the British Crafts Council, which supports the British craft scene.
“Each time we look at a piece, we see something different,” explains Marc, while Diane turns a metal and wooden sculpture by the American artist Tommy Simpson on a lazy Susan, mounted on a table. “You can revisit a room in a gallery or a museum, of course, but nothing be worth enjoying it when you start your shoes and relax in a comfortable chair.”
“”A Life in Craft: The Grauner Collection ”, May 10-15; maaklondon.com
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