SCULPTURE

Trained as a machinist's apprentice before receiving a degree in mechanical engineering at Yale University (1930), Prestini subsequently studied under Laszlo Moholy-Nagy at the Chicago Institute of Design, and was himself a tutor there between 1939 and 1946. Although Prestini spent much of his professional career as a research engineer specialising in construction materials, from the early 1930s onwards he experimented with wood turning, producing platters and bowls that attracted the attention of curators and craft connoisseurs. In 1949 he was part of the team that won the MoMA competition for 'Low Cost Furniture' with a design for a jointless chair. In 1956 Prestini joined the faculty of the University of California, Berkeley, as a professor of architecture.