Wendell Castle

For more than 40 years, Wendell Castle has been a renowned furniture sculptor, marrying organic and geometric forms with wood and even molded plastic. Some of his one-of-a-kind pieces now fetch six figures, and those not privately owned are in such lofty venues as the Museum of Modern Art, the Renwick Gallery and the White House. Now he's going for the (well-heeled) mass market. Again. He tried home and office lines in the '70s and '80s, but they went nowhere.

For more than 40 years, Wendell Castle has been a renowned furniture sculptor, marrying organic and geometric forms with wood and even molded plastic. Some of his one-of-a-kind pieces now fetch six figures, and those not privately owned are in such lofty venues as the Museum of Modern Art, the Renwick Gallery and the White House. Now he's going for the (well-heeled) mass market. Again. He tried home and office lines in the '70s and '80s, but they went nowhere.

Steinway & Sons celebrated its 135th anniversary of piano making Thursday by unveiling its 500,000th piano and inviting Vladimir Horowitz and 24 other leading pianists to perform at Carnegie Hall using, of course, Steinway's latest creation. The one-of-a-kind anniversary concert grand, created by furniture designer Wendell Castle and featuring the signatures of 900 living pianists who use Steinway instruments, will be sent on a world tour.

Steinway & Sons, the venerable piano-manufacturing company, has long had a reputation for musical quality and tradition. The name alone evokes images of gleaming black grand pianos adorning elegant drawing rooms and international concert stages. With the company's 300,000th instrument in the East Room of the White House, the firm figured that something even more special would be on tap when the 500,000th Steinway was produced. There is, and it's here in Los Angeles, third stop on a world tour.

AS the architect of the Palm Springs Art Museum, Frank Sinatra's desert house and the mountaintop station of the Palm Springs Aerial Tramway, E. Stewart Williams helped shape the look of that city. "He was an early environmentalist with his own spin on desert Modernism," says Michael Stern of the Palm Springs Modern Committee, a nonprofit preservation group that will honor Williams at 2 p.m. on Friday with a star on the city's Walk of Stars.

Few objects equal a grandfather clock as a symbol of the home. Yet, while most of us would associate grandfather clocks with the permanence and tradition of home, furniture maker Wendell Castle has taken the grandfather clock as a jumping-off point for the new. Castle is a woodworker who has been surprising, and usually delighting, the world with his furniture for a quarter-century. He also has the distinction of being the American craftsman whose work commands the highest amount of money.

In a box-shaped, soundproof room, Raymond Parada stands before a piano keyboard pulled from its shining 9-foot body. Parada plinks at the keys, listening carefully, making adjustments instinctively. No music pours from the instrument. Parada is not a pianist. Instead, he "turns music boxes into Steinways," spending 24 hours with the inner workings of each piano, creating concert grands for artists from Vladimir Horowitz to Billy Taylor. "The piano must allow an artist to develop his talents.

A small army of decorators, painters, paper hangers and lightbulb changers descended on the Pacific Design Center in West Hollywood. Their mission: to fluff things up for WestWeek. West what? The annual event, which closes today and actually lasts just two days, is the PDC's open house party for home design industry movers and shakers. For more than 100 of the center's 150 showrooms, that means unveiling new collections.

WASHINGTON -- Earl A. Powell III, director of the National Gallery of Art, toured the latest show in his museum 10 days before its opening. Workers were still adding the final touches as he made his way through the exhibition. In the last room, as he took in the paintings, he noticed, out of the corner of his eye, a young woman with long blond hair, jeans and running shoes admiring a work by Belgian surrealist Rene Magritte. "Have you met the courier from Cincinnati?"

WHEN Design Miami -- one of several side shows that takes place during the annual art exhibition extravaganza, Art Basel -- folded up its tent on Sunday, attendees were still talking about the $2.5-million lounge chair. Forget all the hullabaloo associated with these four days of aesthetic mayhem, branded by some as Baselmania. Forget the all-night parties, the electronic music and the mango martinis.