A RARE 'BOOMERANG' MIRROR, 1995

R. Craig Miller, then the Curator of Architecture, Design & Graphics at the Denver Art Museum, approached the Formica Corporation's Creative Director, Susan Grant Lewin, about commissioning Robert Venturi to create a superlative object for their collection. Venturi had previously designed under Lewin's direction, Mirror in the Greek Revival Manner, for the 1983 Formica exhibition, Surface and Ornament, which is now in the permanent collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. For Denver, however, Venturi designed a more complex mirror, featuring the recently reintroduced 'Boomerang' Formica pattern, formerly known as 'Skylark'. By juxtaposing several contrasting patterns, the Boomerang mirror is an example of Venturi's inclusive system of allowing rich contrasting decorative elements to become a unified whole. Formica funded the mirror for the permanent collection of the Denver Art Museum, and Venturi agreed that a second mirror, offered here, be made for Mrs. Lewin's personal collection.
cf. S. Lewin, Formica & Design: From the Counter Top to High Art, New York, 1994, for a history and discussion of artist and architect projects for Formica, and p. 147 for illustration of Venturi's Mirror in the Greek Revival Manner.