Ferris - Shacknove  

Redux
So, today is the two year anniversary of my original post. I'm still looking for information about Ferris-Shacknove. 🙂
So far, this is all I know:
Andree Ferris and Reta Shacknove were a mid-century female design team who created displays for Lord & Taylor, later designing and producing their successful accessory line. They created a series of wire baskets named their "Structural Modern" line.

I have this scan...not a...
I have this scan...not a great help, but you can see a few more of the pieces they designed.
I have a couple more scans (bigger and better) at home, that I will post tonight (unless someone beats me too it).

Woohoo!
Thank you so much, jesgord! Did you scan this yourself? If so, was it in a magazine? I've been told good magazine articles exist about Ferris-Shacknove's work.

I pulled the scan from an...
I pulled the scan from an ebay auction. The other two scans I have are from another auction.....I believe they are excerpts from a magazine article-which magazine, however, I do not know.

I
have something similar looking in white, but I imagine it is European ?
the pot actually came first..

Only have one more...
Only have one more image....not much bigger than the first but there is some more info. Get out your magnifying glass 😉

Robert 1960--Plant stand?
Robert, I applaud your ingenuity.
I'm pretty sure that, originally, the wire-frame piece you show us held a deep, sheet-metal cone (or liner), and was designed as an umbrella stand.
My parents had one, circa 1960, probably acquired through the S&H Green Stamps catalog.
If it were in my possession, I'd ask a local metalworker about fabricating a new liner for the frame. Seems to me the cone was finished in matte-black enamel and had a spaghetti-thin, rolled-over rim.

Known to the Trade
Thanks again, jesgord. I got out my magnifying glass. 🙂 This is the text of the description:
"ANDREE FERRIS (right) and RETA SHACKNOVE (left), known to the Trade as Ferris-Shacknove, got started in their joint careers as designers and manufacturers of unusual window and interior store displays. One of their first assignments was to design and execute displays for Lord & Taylor. Creating unusual manikins of chicken wire, covered with copper mesh, and their structural steel architectural settings evoked considerable praise throughout the display world. Their recent achievement has been the development of a line of accessories which they call "Structural Modern". Miss Ferris is a native of California and received some of her education in Fine Arts at Scripps College, where she graduated. Miss Shacknove took her B.A. at Hunter College and received her Masters degree at New York University."

Reta Shacknove Schwartz
I found this article that mentions the artist Reta Shacknove Schwartz, which I think I'm safe to conclude is our Reta Shacknove's married name. (The link below is the an original Shacknove Schwartz article titled "NO!art An American Psycho-Social Phenomenon".)
'Almost a decade after the battle was purportedly over, Emanuel K. Schwartz and Reta Shacknove Schwartz published a somewhat eccentric, yet exceedingly insightful, collaborative essay on "NO-ART" in Leonardo. The psychoanalyst / artist team insisted that (in direct reaction to the McCarthy era) the 1959-64 movement "gave leadership to later cultural developments; such as, unisex; underground films and press; demonstration = confrontation; art of the street and finally, open violence and rebellion in the streets (Paris 1968)." Although the authors make brief reference to formal "resemblances" among NO! and Dada, it is to NO! art that they turn when attempting to discuss what they describe as the "aesthetics of protest,? and it is the NO-artist whom they identify as the paradigmatic "social critic." After citing a number of venerated examples of art-specific critiques and condemnations of society that had entered the art historical canon, the authors posit that "the NO-art group, however, turns the audience off perhaps because these artists 'act out' the action and esthetic distance between observer and the art object is lost," a proposition that brings to mind Harold Rosenberg's pivotal 1952 anti-formalist essay, "The American Action Painters," wherein the critic insisted that the innovation of Action Painting was to dispense with representation in favor of enactment.'
http://mindshots.mobi/_text/shaknove_no-art_en.html

Geo H
Thanks!
It had crossed my mind it might have started life as an umbrella stand, but to be honest, I have more need of a plant stand.

My Ferris-Shacknove
I bought a Ferris-Shacknove basket recently. I'd been looking for one of these for years. I feel especially fortunate to have found this one in such nice condition.