COLLECTIONS STEWARDSHIP
Services including: conservation, primary research, photographic documentation, essays and interpretation, curation and exhibitions. We work to preserve the legacy of others and bring their artistry to the attention of the public.
David curated a show for the SF Museum of Craft and Design.
It was based on his love of mechanical objects and American industry.
The exhibit was a presentation of a crowd-sourced conversation he started about what represented the "holy grail" of precision manufacture.
This custom-made cutaway of a Spica fuel injector for 1970's Alfa Romeos is an example of the kind of objects he brought together.
An entire months-long discussion on an Internet forum was expanded through text, images, QR codes linking primary references, essays and of course, lots of original objects.
Here is a remarkably preserved 1940's Moore No. 1 Jig Borer with all the associated tooling and documentation. No finer example exists.
David spent 13 years researching and documenting the work of Marie Zimmermann (1879-1972).
She was a very important artist who was recognized and collected in her time, but largely forgotten by the time the research started in the 1990's.
Hundreds of works were located, catalogued with condition reports and photographed with medium format film. He documented over 325 unique objects.
An exhibition and presentation by David at the Society of North American Goldsmiths Conference and an article in Metalsmith Magazine helped secure her legacy with a new generation.
When some of her pieces went up for auction, this example that David photographed here was sold to the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston for over $100,000.
Ultimately, a 400-page book published by Yale University Press was produced with David as the principle photographer.