Wendell Castle was born in Emporia, Kansas in 1932.  He graduated from the University of Kansas with a B.F.A. in industrial design in 1958, and a M.F.A. in sculpture in 1961.

From 1962 through 1969, Castle taught at the Rochester Institute of Technology, School for American Crafts, in Rochester, NY, where he is now an artist-in-residence.  In 1980, Castle opened the Wendell Castle School in Scottsville, NY, where woodworking and furniture design are taught.  In 1988, the school became part of the Rochester Institute of Technology.  In 1998, Castle founded The Wendell Castle Collection, where he works with a design team to create furniture for residential, hospitality, and contract markets.

Castle is known throughout the world for his furniture designs in wood, plastic, and bronze.  His work is represented in many major museums, including the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Smithsonian Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, the Museum of Arts and Design, and the Brooklyn Museum in New York, the Smithsonian American Art Museum and Renwick Gallery, Washington, DC, The Art Institute of Chicago, The Boston Museum of Fine Arts, the Detroit Art Institute, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, and the Victoria & Albert Museum, London.

Awards and honors include a Visual Artists Fellowship Grant and three other grants from the National Endowment for the Arts between 1973 and 1988, the 1994 Visionaries Award from the American Craft Museum,  the 1999 Master of the Medium Award from The James Renwick Alliance of the National Museum of American Art, the 2001 Award of Distinction presented by the Furniture Society, the 2003 Outstanding Achievement Award from The National Association of Schools of Art & Design, and the 2007 Lifetime Achievement Award for Excellence in Design from the Brooklyn Museum of Art.