World War II brought changes to people's lives. Much of the furniture development halted because designers left their homelands either for religious reasons, or because their creativity was no longer invited. In 1940, timber and tubular steel were banned for manufacturing of furniture in Britain. Similarly, the US restricted the use of of raw materials, and the furniture industry used fiber boards instead of natural woods.
The late 40's and 50's heralded a new ear in design and the birth of mid-century modern movement. The period favored light, spacious interiors and vivid colors to counteract the drab war years. The plain functionalism of the earlier modern movement prevailed, but with a more organic approach. Motifs reflecting modular patters and space-age imagery become popular.
Mid-century furniture offers significant changes as a result of newly available manufacturing techniques, and the processes of aluminum casting and innovative ways of bonding wood. In the 1950’s plastics and foam padding were introduced to furniture designs.
The two key features of good 50's designs were organic and asymmetric forms and ergonomic functionality. There was a desire for natural shapes. Furniture, particularly chair designs, fit the body and focused on comfort. Unlike the stark modernist designs of the 30's, the mid-century modern designs were gentler.
Although the United States was definitely not the forefront in furniture design during this era, there was a strong modern movement in America. The Scandinavian designs from Denmark, Sweden, and Finland created a very high order of modern furniture and their popularity soared. The Scandinavian designs were "homier" than the American machine-inspired designs.
By the end of the 50's, factories were manufacturing furnishings that addressed the needs of modern life. The new furniture Stacked, folded, and bent. It could be rearranged and interchanged. It nested and it flexed. Tables were nonspecific and could be used for many purposes. As windows became larger and lower, so did the furniture.
The typical 1950’s style remained en vogue until the late 60’s. Eventually, the market became flooded with an vast array of poor quality reproductions and inferior modern design products in an attempt to capitalize on the early success. The public became sceptical and began to loose their commitment to the modern design concept. It lasted from 1947 to 1957.
Key Mid-Century Modern Furniture Designers
Charles and Ray Eames are probably best know for this lounge chair design. Created in 1956 it is now a classic in the history of modern furniture. Eames's early work combined plywood for seats and elegant stool rod for legs. Later, he recognized the possibilities of resin-impregnated fiberglass, creating the DAR chairs which went into production in 1951.
The original one-pieces seat-shell came in a choice of nine bright colors such as lemon yellow, sea-foam green, mustard, and red. Eames believed that well-designed furniture should be affordable and the DAR chair was produced and sold by the Herman Miller furniture company for $35. Learn more about Charles and Ray Eames at eamesoffice.com
There are two significant attributes assigned to mid-century designer Alexander Girard: He was the least well-known of the great designers at Herman Miller in the 1950s and 1960s, and he was the greatest colorist and textile designer of modern time. He was the first modern designer to define textiles as being more than just functional and to further emphasize form through the application of color and pattern.
Arne Jacobsen - The extremely famous armchair that has gone down in the universal history of design. It was designed by Jacobsen in 1958, on occasion of furnishing the Royal Copenhagen Hotel of the Danish capital. The Egg has got such an organic and unique shape that it can convey a feeling of privacy even if set in a public space, yet remains comfortable. The structure is composed by chromium plated steel tubes, the body of synthetic material padded by polyurethane foam and coated with fabric or leather. The base is an aluminum “star” shape, the terminals being made of grey-black synthetic rubber. It can be equipped with an automatic return mechanism. The armchair can be provided with its special footrest stool reminding of its gentle lines and sharing the same base.
Florence Knoll was initially hired by Hans Knoll to oversee the development of textile designs for Knoll Associates. With a background in furniture design, Florence was soon designing furniture for the corporate boardroom and the living room. Her clients included the Rockerfeller family, Connecticut General Life, H.J. Heinz, and CBS.
Vladimir Kagan is one of the most influential and successful of the mid-century modern furniture designers. During the 40's, his designs were inspired by the geometric Bauhaus style. By the 50's, he began more curvilinear forms that are highly recognized today. His works can be seen at the Vladimir Kagan website.
This balance of sculptural form and everyday function has made the Isamu Noguchi designs an understated and beautiful element in homes and offices since its introduction in 1948. His relationship with Herman Miller® came about when one of his designs was used to illustrate an article written by George Nelson called "How to Make a Table." Learn more about Noguchi and his work at noguchi.com
This Lady Armchair was designed by Marco Zanuso in 1951. This was one of the first mid-century furniture designs to be mass produced using foam rubber covered with fabric. It won a gold metal in the IX Triennale in Milan.
Harry Bertoia produced some of the 20th century's most distinctive industrial and artistic forms. Between 1943 and 1947 he worked with Charles and Ray Eames. In 1950 he became a designer for Knoll, where he created his iconic wire-mesh Diamond chair.
Hans Wegner was born in 1914 in Denmark where he completed his early education and trained as a cabinet maker. In 1936, at the age of 22 he attended the School of Arts and Crafts in Copenhagen. This "round" chair was designed in 1949. Interiors magazine, in America, put the "Round" chair on the cover in 1950 and called it 'the world's most beautiful chair, catapulting Wegner into international fame.
Finn Juhl was born on January 30, 1912, in Copenhagen. He broke with the established furniture tradition and designed a number of creations that regenerated Danish furniture design.
Verner Panton was born in 1926 in Denmark and was trained as an architectural engineer at Odense Technical College, and later studied at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen. His chairs were often constructed from molded plastic and steel wire frames whose resemblance to traditional chairs is sometimes only slight. His 1960, self-titled chair was the first of its kind. It was formed from a single piece of molded plastic and represented a unique synthesis of design and technique.
Designed by Gio Ponti in 1965 to be a “modern, comfortable, extremely strong armchair” which was also “light-weight, adaptable and easy to take down to be shipped "anywhere”. Learn more at gioponti.com.
The Womb chair, with its matching ottoman, was designed in 1946, part of Eero Saarinen's breakthrough seating collection. The Womb's steel rod base and polished-chrome finish, combined with its frame upholstered in fabric—all covering a fiberglass shell, highlights Saarinen's brilliant design aesthetic and his architectural skills.
This Chaise is by interior designer and decorator Edward Wormley in 1947. The gentle undulating frame, made of laminated white maple and cherry wood, is raised on tapering angled supports united by metal rods and an X-shaped tension cable.
This Antony Chair was designed by Jean Prouve in 1950, originally for the University of Strasbourg. With an engineering background, he industrialized many furniture pieces using metals and often prefabricated components. He chose to leave the construction marks visible.
Read about Mid-Century Modern
Sourcebook of Modern Furniture by Jerryll Habegger, Joseph H. Osman - 2005 - 788 pages. OVER 2,000 IMPORTANT PIECES arranged by type of furniture or fixture make this book the go-to guide for students and historians of modern furniture, as well as an essential tool for interior designers. Each entry gives the details of the design: date, model name or number, manufacturer, materials, and dimensions.
Collecting Modern: A Guide to Mid-Century Furniture and Ceramics by David Rago, John Sollo - 2001 - 160 pages. The fastest-growing segment of the art and collectibles market is Mid-Century Modern furniture and decorative arts. There are many reasons for this, including its tremendous availability, relatively low cost, and imaginative variety. For whatever reasons, Modern is back -- in all its shockingly bright and basic colors and its sleek go-with-anything lines. Each piece is a statement of art.The best American furniture and ceramics during this period came from non-factory producers, artists developing their personal styles in shaping the decorative arts.From furniture artists Eames and Nakashima to ceramicists Scheier, Natzler, Voulkos, Cabat and Grotell, we learn about the creations of America's great designers whose bodies of work dovetail neatly into one another, in spite of how vastly different they are.
Mid-century Modern: Furniture of the 1950's by Cara Greenberg - 1995. Taking full advantage of the resurgence in popularity of retro-fifties design, this highly praised book lets the reader rediscover the wonders of boomerang-shaped coffee tables, the funky curvaciousness of biomorphic furniture, the industrial sleekness of cool metals, unusual angles, and other design delights. Photos.
Design in the Fifties: When Everyone Went Modern by George H. Marcus - Art - 1998 - 157 pages. Includes numerous full-color and black-and-white illustrations of examples of design from the period, ranging from architecture, engineering, and transport to clothing, appliances, and tableware, and from economical, good design creations to dime-store novelties. The book examines the innovative style that reflected the new optimism and consumerism of postwar culture, tracing its development not only in the context of art and design but also in terms of history. It shows a society smitten with the idea of being modern and influenced by the growing field of marketing, advertising and the powerful new medium of television. The objects gain a broader sense of context because many of them are illustrated in advertisements from the 1950s, seen from the perspective of their period.This highly readable book analyzes and documents the interaction of a wide range of design objects and styles from the 1950s, making it of interest not only to the specialist but also to a broader public.
