Seeking Kipp Stewart and the Good

Rob Forbes
May 30th, 2024

I was recently asked to give a commemorative talk about a California designer, Kipp Stewart (1928–2022). I recalled him only vaguely from the ‘90s as a teak furniture designer whose work they carried at Summit. Googling Stewart revealed no Wiki page and very little written about him online, but there was a wide range of images of his work, mostly from the ‘50s and ‘60s. The breadth and understated elegance of his designs inspired me to do more digging.

Stewart’s work spanned 60 years, beginning in the ‘50s in SoCal, where he was at the center of a vibrant mid-century movement. He collaborated with numerous manufacturers in the US and around the globe, started several design partnerships, and even worked in the Eames office for one year. He received numerous national and international awards and was selected for shows at major museums, including MOMA. Later, at Summit furniture in the ‘80s, he championed sustainability long before it became trendy. He was also a talented architect, known widely for the original iconic Ventana Inn in Big Sur. Here is an exceptionally talented and prolific designer who flourished in my hood in LA, at the height of American mid-century modernism. How could I not know about him?

I stumbled onto this photo of Kipp and his designer peers in SoCal in an LA Times magazine article from 1958.

My speculation is that the very concept of “design” was not yet defined for the public until decades after Stewart’s early career in SoCal in the 50’s and 60’s. There was neither a vocabulary nor a platform for design at this time—no design section in newspapers, no directory of practitioners, and certainly no Pinterest. Unless you were a design professional with access to private showrooms, or you were one of the few subscribers to the iconic Arts & Architecture magazine, modern furniture design, as such, was likely not on your radar.

Stewart stands out from most of his peers in that he was so prolific, a highly successful and productive designer for six decades. However, as my research revealed, he was known for being ludicrously reticent—he didn’t like to talk about his work. But this still doesn’t explain his anonymity. Why, for example, was he not even mentioned in LACMA’s comprehensive 2012 show, Living in a Modern Way: California Design 1930–1965?

One answer may be that Stewart didn’t fit easily into the modernist sensibility and vision. He wasn’t interested in abandoning tradition; in fact he started a company in the ‘60s called The Shaker Connection with this past-looking mission: “We want Americans to remember that they are only two generations removed from some of the finest designer craftsmen in recent history.”

Photos: Kip Stewart pieces from the 60’s in SoCal

But the real answer might be that he just didn’t particularly care about publicity and may have even disdained it. Let me back this up with a provocative quote by Stewart that has stuck with me as much as his work has:

“I have no interest in style or being unique or clever or new.

To me, all that counts is what is good.”

Who determines what is good? It’s a tricky thing to define or measure. To be sure, it’s more difficult to achieve Good than it is New or Unique. But it seems most designers conflate newness and quality—if it’s not new, it can’t be good. For a super-talented designer like Stewart to have good as his end goal, to not be concerned whether a work will be considered new, is in itself unique. It’s much easier for modern journalists and critics to write about a work that’s new; it’s far more challenging to explain why something is “good.” Maybe that’s why Stewart’s legacy is peculiarly difficult to unearth.

Photos: Kip Stewart pieces from the 70’s at Summit

The Eames had a clever and modern definition of good design: they characterized it as “the best for the most for the least” and executed this strategy with, for example, their iconic plywood chairs. While Kipp Stewart worked in the Eames office for a year in the ‘60s, his sense of “good” had no such social mission, but perhaps their modesty rubbed off on him. It’s certainly refreshing to consider—in our modern world where newness is king and where influencers grab the spotlight—that perhaps good is good enough?