Maurice Beane (Photo by Adam DuBrueler)
Maurice Beane’s grandfather taught him the wholesome joy of working with his hands. Down by Sloop Creek in the historic Northern Neck fishing community of Reedville, Beane’s granddad, Nelson, made his living as an oysterman and crabber. “It was very physical work,” says Beane in his quiet way, sitting straight in a vintage oak dining chair, one of many such seats inside Project 1, a home decor store nestled in a shopping center off Staples Mill Road. Beane displays his finds there, grouping the artistic objects he collects — bowls, vases, tables, among them — in arresting arrangements.
“It was manual and required a lot of exertion, but it also required a high level of skill,” Beane says of his grandfather’s work on the water. He introduced Beane to tools, showing him how to use them to repair fishing equipment and tackle the odd jobs that always need doing around any home. From the start, Beane says, “I realized that I was naturally handy.” It was a clue about his calling.
Four decades later, Beane’s life’s work stems from the works of his hands and the designs in his mind. A career furniture designer, architectural metalworker and 20th-century decorative arts collector-dealer, Beane is a veteran of Richmond’s creative arts community. With a calm demeanor, easy smile and big hands that are strong as a sailor’s and steady as a doctor’s, Beane is recognized internationally as an expert in postmodern design aesthetics. He made the city his home as a Virginia Commonwealth University student in the early 1980s. He fashioned his first piece of furniture, a distinctive coffee table, to outfit the apartment he shared with his sister in those early days.
“There used to be a store in Tappahannock, A to Z Antiques, where I found this incredible slab of marble,” says Beane, his eyes widening slightly with the memory. “It was heavy as hell, but it had a broken edge that I loved; it looked like a wing.” Beane crafted the coffee table by combining that piece of marble with four chimney flues he picked up at a hardware store and painted flat black. When he finished, “It was a sculpture,” he says, laughing.
A friend came over to visit and promptly fell in love with Beane’s table. He wanted one just like it and offered to pay Beane to make him one. “That was my first furniture commission,” Beane recalls. Word about the upstart craftsman’s talent spread rapidly around Richmond; in 1986, Beane was invited to demonstrate his furniture making at June Jubilee, a local arts and music festival.
“I loved that experience,” says Beane. “I was there all day, working on metal with my hand file, banging away on pieces with my hammer. And back then, $200” — the amount he was paid for his appearance — “was a lot of money.” Beane credits June Jubilee with raising his profile within Richmond’s artistic circles as well as among patrons eager to support his work.
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A selection of Beane's custom designs (Photos courtesy Maurice Beane)
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After graduating from VCU in 1984, Beane worked full time as a furniture salesman at Miller & Rhoads. He kept creating furniture and also exhibited some of his paintings in area art spaces, including the long-gone Last Stop Gallery on Main Street. “It was one of the few places in the city that was very intentional about highlighting work by artists of color,” says Beane, who describes his painting style as “postmodern with a touch of high-tech.”
The turning point in his career came when Beane exhibited his work at the Hand Workshop’s 1986 Christmas show and fundraiser. By then, he was making mirrors, chairs and other unique pieces for the home. “I sold everything at that show,” Beane says. His relationship with the Hand Workshop, which was founded in 1963 and now exists as the Visual Arts Center of Richmond, helped him cultivate lifelong friendships and gain enough local and national renown to launch the next phase of his career. In 1988, he left Miller & Rhoads after earning a five-year contract designing furniture for the prestigious Harold Zimmerman Design Group.
Beane commuted to the company’s High Point, North Carolina, headquarters several times a month, overseeing the production of his pieces and drawing up designs for new home decor objects. Many of his designs were classified as postmodern, and Beane says he enjoyed challenging himself by creating pieces with exotic finishes. “I used materials like sharkskin and tortoise shell, but not any endangered animals,” he notes. His furniture appeared in glossies including Southern Accents and House & Garden, and the commissions kept rolling in.
All the while, “I lived and breathed my work,” Beane says. He never married or had kids, and he’s thoughtful when asked if he regrets it. “If I could go back and change some things, I would,” he admits. “Truthfully, who wouldn’t? But I am grateful that I always found deep meaning in my work, a deep purpose.” He’s also grateful for “the few longtime girlfriends” in his past, “who were very supportive of me and my vision for my work.”
After an unpleasant experience with a prominent lighting design company — “basically, they mass-produced a line based on one of my pieces without giving me credit; they made millions,” Beane says — he refocused his time and talent in Richmond in the 1990s. Since then, he’s been anchored in the arts community, serving stints on the boards of many longstanding arts organizations, and on the city’s Public Arts Commission. He’s watched the city’s appreciation for art, and diverse artists, evolve.
“The arts community is more inclusive now, and there are more opportunities for artists of color to show their work,” he says.
Photo by Adam DuBrueler
To a degree, all art is informed by the identity of the artist. This, too, is true of Beane, who says he took early personal inspiration from pioneering African-American furniture designer Alex Locadia. “His pieces were dark and sleek, lots of leather and stitching; a kind of powerful, ‘Batman’ vibe. I felt a connection to him as a fellow black male artist in the ’80s.”
To emerging artists of every medium, Beane offers twofold advice: “Don’t count yourself out; believe your work is worthy, and other people will believe it is, too.”
Beane was one of four curators for the inaugural Art Style Design, a Feb. 16-17 event centered on 20th- and 21st-century art, decorative arts design and furniture. Working with co-curators Eric Schindler Gallery owner Kirsten Gray, interior designer Geraldine Duskin, and modern artist and art dealer Bart Schultz, pieces of Beane’s furniture were incorporated within vignettes — like still-life paintings plucked from the canvas, made real through tangible objects that harmonized the design aesthetics of all four artists. Beane said he was “energized” by the event, staged at the renovated Highpoint gallery on Broad Street.
Beane often forgets that he’s 56, but his body reminds him at night, he says, when he’s sore from lifting and shifting heavy pieces of furniture around his Shockoe Bottom warehouse. Aching or not, Beane remains opens to new artistic experiences. He’s currently considering a local museum’s request for him to curate a design exhibition. He might devote more time to his painting. Perhaps he’ll take part in other collaborative projects like Art Style Design. Opportunity is a wave that crests whenever it will, especially in a tide-turning place like Richmond. “Overall, I feel young,” Beane says. “I really do.”
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