guide button
Boardroom Door, 1990
Red oak, brass, oil paint, etc. (“just about every material there is”)
Lent by the Ontario Crafts Council

For a long time, Peteran was not particularly concerned with furniture. He identified himself as a “public artist.” Among his works in this vein are the two large doorways seen in this gallery—one for a public space and one for a private home. This oak door was made for the Ontario Crafts Council and has been critically acclaimed as “a Rosetta stone for Canadian craft, evoking the spectrum of arts, crafts and trades.” A silhouette map of Canada anchors the composition, and the door includes numerous allusions to the variety and richness of craft traditions: linenfold carving like that on Elizabethan interior paneling, a gorgeous bit of ornamental leaf carving, the nuanced curves of a fiddle, a compass, and a measured molding profile are among the motifs. The clever puns and spatial games include numerous nonfunctional keyholes, small doors, and drawers set within the larger doorway, a handle in the shape of a key, and a functional clock whose pendulum hangs one panel below the face to which it is connected. There are also less expected features: a nightmarishly howling child’s face, a brace of pistols, a miniature jail-cell door, and two belts tightened across an unfinished plank. These dark elements introduce a note of uncertainty into the work and suggest some of Peteran’s own ambivalence about “craft” as a defining category.