Exhibited publicly for the first time in JB Blunk: Muse at Kasmin in 2022, the present hat rack (c. 1970) has remained in the home of its present owner since its creation. The work is composed of redwood, the colossal species of tree historically significant to the development of California’s lumber industry. JB Blunk was immersed in redwood following the creation of his major work The Planet (1969), now on permanent view at the Oakland Museum of California, even using the excess falloff from that work to create an intricate wall in his renowned home in Inverness, California. Developing his newfound passion for woodworking by building his home and creating his own furniture, Blunk made custom works for his close friends and family, stylistically pronounced by their organic forms. This work was created around 1970 for Gordon Ashby, a friend and patron of Blunk, recognized for his photographs of the artist collecting and working with driftwood. Ashby was known to wear hats, and one day, Blunk noticed he needed a larger hat rack; a few weeks later, he gifted Ashby with the present work.

Blunk’s unwavering admiration for the natural world and primordial landscapes catalyzed the artist, initially trained as a ceramicist, to develop a distinct style of sculpture using raw, salvaged materials. Blunk’s early sojourn in Japan, where he apprenticed in the ancient unglazed ceramic tradition with two master ceramicists, formatively instructed him in the power of the elemental forces earth, water, and fire. He brought these principles to Northern California, where a shared affinity for Japanese aesthetics and philosophy led the Surrealist painter Gordon Onslow Ford, following an introduction by the preeminent sculptor Isamu Noguchi, to gift the artist an acre of land to build a home and studio, which today hosts a vibrant artist residency program. Living and working near in Inverness, near the densely wooded Bishop Pine Preserve fifty miles north of San Francisco, allowed Blunk to transition his focus from ceramics to woodworking, foraging trunks and burls from fallen trees on nearby beaches. In his words, “This place here, the house, the outdoors all around is… like a big sculpture. I sort of slipped in the back door on that, there came a time when I guess one day I thought that I am a sculptor now” (JB Blunk, in conversation with Fariba Bogzaran, Inverness, California, 1993. Fariba Bogzaran Archive).