Issue link: http://papercitymagazine.uberflip.com/i/221556
GEORGE SELLERS ON MINIMALISM: "I CONSIDER MYSELF A MINIMALIST, JUST NOT A VERY GOOD ONE." Sellers' Sorelle Preveggenti (Prescient Italian Sisters) and his gilded Falling Man. Vintage leather butterfly chair anchors the corner of the sitting room. Black plaster ostrich-foot candleholder is part of Sellers' Menagerie Vivante collection, $650 at Grange Hall. Gilded plaster Facette lamp base. Castmetal creature from Sellers' Menagerie Vivante collection, at Grange Hall. Plaster hand lamp from George Sellers Creative. Carved-wood Italian reliquary crown, circa 19th century. the famed circus owner, while it was undergoing renovation. In Italy, he had spent many hours examining the ceiling of the Pitti Palace. "No one studied 3-D work on ceilings, but I loved the craft," he says. "I just knocked on the trailer door." The head designer emerged. He was stuck, says Sellers, unable to find sculptors who could carve terracotta. For the next two years, Sellers created gryphons and columns, realizing that he could master this sort of original work. The experience led to other lavish residential installations and a six-year stint as the design director for an import company, which introduced him to the notion of mass production. "His ideas fly out of his head so fast, you have to be ready to catch them," says nephew and head DECEMBER | PAGE 27 | 2013 fabricator Ely Sellers, who began as an apprentice eight years ago. "I never went to college and was working at a restaurant. He said, 'Hey, you can live with me and work with me.' I jumped on it. It's a slow climb, and I'm still growing. But I've always believed in him." The two collaborate on all projects, including an upcoming furniture collection for Neiman Marcus; a zoo-full of plaster animals, available at Grange Hall in Dallas; and a 4-foot-tall spider for Bergdorf's Christmas window, the fourth that they've done. "It will be covered in one-eighth-inch-long quartz crystals," says Ely, "so it looks hairy." Sellers likes to stand out on the street when such a window is complete. "I get the same joy as I did when I opened an exhibition," he says. "It's like public art."