James Lileks looks back to simpler times:
Buzzland Retroween, Con't. | buzz.mn
All these kids are in their fifties now. This shot, from 1957 (click to enlargE) , shows the popular costumes of the day – mostly homemade. The kid in the pirate mask is wearing a costume that says “Howdy Doody’s Indian Princess.” Well, it was mix-and-match day, I guess.
Charlton Modern, Estate of the Day - Luxist
We've already done a little bit on this one, but here is a much larger photospread. As for all the snarky comments, as near as I can figure, they're coming from folks who claim to like MCM, but don't actually like MCM.
The things you find when you're looking for something else!
Here is a great resource: A list of stores specializing in mid-century modern furniture and artifacts all over the country. The listings for the stores in San Francisco with which I am familiar seem dead on. This list is large enough, and geographically spread out enough, that most people will find themselves within a couple-hour drive of at least one of these places.
Which decade's style would you like to see become "in" again: '50s? '80s? '90s?See if you can guess which one grabs the landslide win....
One question springs to mind: What, precisely, was " '90s style?"
Click the image to learn more about Harry Bertoia, one of the most iconic of mid-century creative minds:
In San Francisco, where I live, this would cost you a minimum of seven figures - or more, depending on the location. You can have this one, though - and a 20 minute drive time (if I recall correctly) to the Chicago Loop - for $213,000. Click the image for more. It's being handled by Joe Kunkel of Jetset Modern, a fave of this blog. Tell him Bill Quick sent you.
Here's another great photospread from one of my favorite sites, Jetset Modern. I especially love this home's interior, because Markus Lindsjö has many of the same pieces in his place that I do in mine. As usual, click the picture for the tour.
Here's a nice little essay on the philosophy behind the interior layouts of mid-century residential architecture:
Mid-Century Modern Interiors
When mid-century modern houses were built in the 1950s and 1960s, the most striking feature of their interior was usually their open and flowing floor plan. Living room spaces flowed into the dining room, which flowed into the kitchen. A vaulted ceiling over it all really did make the core of the house one big “great room.” This was, after all, the era of “togetherness.”
Here's a nice short photospread and review of a spectacular mid-century home in Brentwood's Crestwood neighborhood:
Modern resurrection is a wonderful tale of how a ruined mid-century husk was rescued and re-imagined for the 21st century. Be sure and check out the full photo spread, including some spectacular interior shots, by clicking on the picture.
Gregory Ain's Mar Vista is a legendary stop on the road of mid-century modern residential architecture. This is a website full of information about the history of this tract, including houses like this:
And for an interesting twist on homes now more than fifty years old, see the updated replicas being constructed in the Second Life virtual community:
Here's the same thing, but during the day:
News Democrat Journal - Life & Style -
Although construction of the Arch didn't begin until 1963, it was actually designed during a nationwide competition in 1947-1948 by architect Eero Saarinen.
Now that's what I call thinking big, Mid-Century-wise.
UC Irvine Extension Offers New Course in Modern Art, Architecture, Focusing on Los Angeles Influence
IRVINE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--The University of California, Irvine Extension is offering a unique class for modern art and architecture enthusiasts to learn more about the influences of the current critical era of American art as exhibited in the greater Los Angeles area. The class, titled “What is Modern: Art & Design of the 20th Century,” will be held both at the UCI Learning Center in Orange, Calif. and in the field; allowing students to study, witness and explore many examples of modern art and architecture, including the renowned Hollyhock House, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. The class will be held November 10 and 11.This sounds interesting....Students will be able to discern the similarities and differences between major modern movements in architecture and decorative arts, and will learn how late 19th century movements such as Art Nouveau and Arts and Crafts were the precursors to the development of 20th century modern movements such as Art Deco, Bauhaus, International Style and mid-century Modern.
George Nelson (1908-1986) was one of the most powerful forces behind the development of this century's American design aesthetic.R Designs has some handy little thumbnail bios of the better-known mid-century design masters. Here's one for George Nelson.
Not many people know this, but among George Nelson's many other talents, he was also a textile designer: And you can still buy his fabrics today!
Check out:
George Nelson Fabric » Mid-Century Modern Collection and Designer Fabric - J & O Fabrics: Products
This would be nice as a bedspread on a Nelson Thin-edge Bed.
For you folks in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area:
An occasional series on shopping by category. This week: Local stores offer classics for the home.I wouldn't mind having that McCobb planner group for my own office.
Mid-Century Modernism wasn't - and isn't - just about furniture or architecture. Textiles played a huge role in the movement as well. Here's a nice rundown on one of the giants:
Multicultural Craftsman Jack Lenor Larsen - Design 2007 -- New York Magazine
STLtoday - Life & Style - Home & Decor
Tulip is a modern classic
And like so much of the best MCM work, it remains enormously popular today.
When Finnish architect Eero Saarinen developed his landmark pedestal collection, his goal was "clear up the slum of legs" that characterized the American dining experience. The inspiration was a drop of liquid, the result was the Tulip table, a curvy aluminum base with a swiveling laminate top.
Curbed LA: Celebrity Real Estate Wrap: Gossip Star's Mid-Century Modern
1) Legendary gossip columnist (Star magazine) Janet Charlton has listed her David Hyun-designed, five-bedroom Hancock Park home for $2.995 million. But the home, used for numerous TV/film shoots, including Running With Scissors, goes overboard with its mid-century modern decorations to the point that it "looks like a vintage furniture store that caters to hipster doofuses," according to Luxist.com. [Real Estalker]Hipster "doofuses?" I don't know if I'd go that far....
A short look at some of the iconic work of the legendary Isamu Noguchi.
Inexpensive Architecture - Portfolio.com
Take the slick, mid-century modern homes designed by the Chicago firm Keck & Keck. They regularly sell for well over $1 million—if the house is in good condition and located in a prestigious North Shore suburb. But in the south-side suburb of Chicago Heights, you can find a four-bedroom Keck & Keck with all the trimmings—14-foot wood beam ceilings, slate floors, glass walls—for just $218,000.In real estate, the three most important factors are location, location, and location. But if you're looking for an affordable mid-century modern house, that maxim, while still true, may not work exactly as real estate agents usually mean it.
For you lucky folks living in NYC, White Furniture (several locations) offers the best selection and price on mid-century modern reproductions and replicas I've seen anywhere. And according to a couple of commenters at
Apartment Therapy, the quality is pretty good, too. Of course, they don't sell a repro of the piece I really want: a Saarinen womb chair. In fact, I've only found one place that does: Paradigm Gallery.
They are also on MySpace.com, where the good news is:
In 2008, Paradigm Gallery will open galleries in Atlanta and Los Angeles with future galleries slated for Austin, New York, San Francisco, Tampa, Washington D.C., and other cities scheduled for 2009 openings.Two years to wait isn't that long, though, is it? And I could always buy online, I suppose....
Yes, I promise we'll have that extended discussion (argument, shriekfest) on the issue of vintage versus re-issues versus licensed versus reproduction versus knockoff mid century modern furniture. But not just yet. Later.
Story behind the product:And it most certainly does. I have a CFL in mine right now.The pendant is designed to hang low above a table while at the same time giving a moderate light to the surroundings. In Denmark you will see that approximately one in every two homes has a PH5 pendant.
This is what PH wrote about this product:“After 33 years of more or less Christian behavior, I have converted to Islam - in my relation to the manufacturer of incandescent bulbs. For a whole lifetime I believed that consideration for the consumer and good sense would triumph but now I have become a fatalist. I accept fate and have, with Louis Poulsen’s permission, constructed a PH fixture in which you can put anything - glowworms, Christmas lights and 100 watt metal filament bulbs. A fluorescent tube would however be too long in its present shape!”
The difference between this fixture and previous PH fixtures was that he no longer drew the vizier lines from the filament of the light source, but from the socket itself. The advantage was that the point the vizier lines now led to was a part of the fixture and not the actual center of the light source - as had previously been the case. Regardless of how the lamp was installed and no matter which incandescent bulb it was furnished with, the PH 5 was and is completely glare-free.
Because the diameter of the top shade is 50 cm, this fixture is called a PH 5. The number “5” refers to 5 dm=50 cm. The PH 5 consists of three reflecting shades, a cone and two smaller colored shades (red and blue) designed to improve the light source’s color rendering properties. Red and blue was a natural choice because these two colors belong to the spectrum of which the human eye is least sensitive, and at the same time they weaken the yellow/green spectrum where the eye is most sensitive.
In 1980 the construction of the PH 5 was altered due to the size of the incandescent lamps all becoming the same. Today it is also possible to get a PH 5 using a compact fluorescent light source, so PH was right - it could work.
Henningsen, Saarinen, Jacobsen....
I found the four Jacobsen Series Seven chairs (complete with a tattered piece of a Fritz Hansen label on the underside of one seat) at a sidewalk sale in the Castro, painted flat-mud brown by, apparently, somebody using a toothbrush to smear on the paint. Sixty bucks and some elbow grease later....
Which brings up another nice thing about MCM furniture: There's quite a bit of it still around, and there are quite a few people who regard it as junk. That won't always be the case, so enjoy it - and take advantage of it - while you can.
A while earlier, I posted that I really wanted a Sarfatti Triennale lamp. Well, here's another great photospread from Jet Set Modern which includes several pics of the lamp in a furnished interior: This is a Keck & Keck home, so don't miss the architectural details!
What with prices for even a single (did they make any other kind, back in the day?) Nelson Thin-Edge bed going for upwards of $5000, and being very difficult to find in the first place, having one of these babies is pretty much out of reach for most people. Still, I really liked that look of the bed floating above the floor on spindly white pipe legs, with a minimal headboard and footboard.
So I built my own.
No, it doesn't look exactly like the Nelson example, but it gives the same general feeling of minimal "floatiness," and it's quite solid. Best of all, it cost about $150 bucks.
I bought everything in one trip to Lowes (an SUV or pickup helps).
The support frame is made of 3/4 black iron pipe - available in the plumbing department. For a queen-size mattress I made a square using 4-ft lengths of pipe. Use the appropriate pipe connectors to put everything together. The pipe is quite greasy, so you might want to wear gloves while handling. I used two 4" lengths with a crossbar connector for each leg - bringing the height of each leg from the top of the frame to about 14". Once you've got it all put together, wash everything with a good grease-cutter, and then paint it. I used a can of white acrylic appliance spray paint.
For the platform I bought a pair of hollow-core undrilled doors, 32"X80", and screwed them together using three metal strap connectors on each side. Then screw the frame to the bottom of the platform using U-straps on all four sides. Flip it over upright and attach a 3" or 4" wide length of finished oak board cut to 64" length (stock at Lowes) using angle-braces. I used four of them. The headboard is a piece of plywood cut to shape, covered with batting and suede fabric, and attached to the wall behind the bed. This one stands on two wooden support legs screwed to the back. If I figure out a simple, cheap way to attach a headboard bent at an angle backwards, I'll let you know, and update this post, with another picture, too.
Here's what the underside with the frame looks like:
Okay, it's not really Nelson, but it doesn't look bad, and it ought to hold you until you've got that spare ten grand to buy a couple of the genuine article to push together beneath your queen mattress.
Brand new kitchen appliances with all the latest whiz-bangs - that look like the clunkers they used back in the forties and fifties.
One good way to stir controversy among MCM aficionados is to proclaim your choice for the "best" of anything.
Chairs, for some reason, are especially contentious. Here is my pick for the best of the MCM lounge chairs: the Saarinen Womb Chair, reportedly designed for Florence Knoll, who told Saarinen to create a chair "she could curl up in." Far more than the Eames 670 lounger, the Womb Chair embodied the MCM tenets of simplicity, new materials, biomorphic shapes, and ergonomic design.
What would be your pick? Let us know in the comments.
Charles and Ray Eames lived what they expounded - in particular, in Case Study House #8, the Eames' personal dwelling for much of their lives. Click the link or on this great pic for a comprehensive look at the home of MCM's greatest designer-duo from the Library of Congress.
UPDATE: Here is the official Eames Office site, maintained by the Eames family: Eames Gallery. The family still owns and uses the house, but permits interior tours on one day a year only. Check here for further details.
Philip Johnson's Glass House (click for another photospread):
Mies van der Rohe's Farnsworth House (click the pic for a very nice photospread):
Yes, there do seem to be more than a few similarities, don't there? It's because there are. As one commenter here
notes:
According to the tour guide for the Farnsworth house, van de Rohe gave the plans to Johnson prior to building his own house, and Johnson used the plans to build his version.Wikipedia offers a quite complete entry about the Farnsworth House, as does Columbia Universty. Columbia's entry even includes architectural drawings and construction pictures.
I think in the end that you have to give pride of place to Mies van der Rohe. As Johnson himself said:
“I pointed out to him (Mies) that it (a glass house) was impossible because you had to have rooms, and that meant solid walls up against the glass, which ruined the whole point. Mies said, ‘I think it can be done.’”Still, just as a personal preference, I like Johnson's expression of Mies' idea just a little bit better.
Here's another photospread from Jetset Modern I like a lot:
All you need to do is start combing through Craigslist for mid-century modern stuff to discover there are all sorts of words used by all sorts of people to describe it.
Vintage is one of them:
How Do You Know If it is 'Vintage Collectible Memorabilia' ? - Associated Content
According to MWCD, it can be defined as "dating from the past" and its origin is Latin for grape gathering."Vintage" is also often used by folks to mean "less than a hundred years old," which certainly covers everything we might call mid-century modern.
When the word ‘vintage' appears on a price tag, in an antique environment, dealers predominantly mean: I don't know the date of this item, but I like it, and I like the word vintage.
2. of or designating the style of an earlier time: retro clothes.In real life, a lot of advertisers use "retro" to mean a somewhat hazy period from the beginning of the mid-century period through the Pop of the seventies, and even some of the post-modern products of the eighties and nineties. A search through Craigslist on "retro" will, however, turn up quite a few mid-century items.
In truth, they probably didn't have lofts like these back in the 'Fifties. But they do now.
Remember these?
Ericsson is better known for whizbang cell phones these days, but once upon a time they challenged the black boredom of mighty Ma Bell with the Ericofon.
By the way, if you've got one that's faded a bit, here's a guy who will tell you how to restore it. As well as a lot more about Ericofons in general, which is about what you'd expect from a joint that calls itself ericofon.com, right?
UPDATE: Sweet mother of gawd!
UPDATE: And even more: here.
If you've never seen Philp Johnson's iconic Glass House, one of the greatest triumphs of modern residential architecture, check out Michael Moran's Photo Spread of the house, interior and exterior, in all seasons.
Truly an amazing place - and Johnson lived in it until his death.
UPDATE: via Ed Driscoll, a fascinating video look at Johnson and his famous house. By the way, Ed makes the excellent point that the Glass House owes a hell of a lot to Mies van der Rohe's Farnsworth House. He's right, and I'll be taking a look at that groundbreaker later on, as well.
Take a walk down memory lane with this frankly scary video of an early version of Ronald McDonald. I doubt that today's parents would let this guy within a hundred yards of their kids, but these were less paranoid times. And check out the tailfins on the cars in the background!
From YouTube comes this nicely done introductory video to the basics of mid-century modernism.
Mid-Century Modern: Furniture of the 1950s
When I first became interested - or perhaps it would be more accurate to say "re-interested" (although that is a story I will save for later) in mid-century modern interiors, I went to Amazon and searched for books on the subject. I bought three in my first batch, and this was one of them. The other two were written by British writers, and focused heavily on British and European architects and designers, especially Robin Day, who was very big across the pond, but barely made a ripple in the popular attention here in the US.
But Greenberg's book, which I didn't know at the time is a classic in the genre, was just the ticket! Packed chock full of beautiful pictures, it gives you everything you need to form a solid foundation in the history and application of the great designers of the era - Eames in particular is given his rightful due as the first among equals, although the sometimes-neglected George Nelson of Herman Miller is firmly placed high in the firmament as well, not just for his own designs (of which there are several stunning examples) but for the enormous influence he exerted on the entire movement.
Greenberg herself is a witty and thoroughgoing guide through the origins and history of the American mid-century era, tracing it from its beginnings in the International and machine-age work of giants like Mies van der Rohe, Corbusier, and Marcel Breuer, and following it to the end of the first flowering in the late 1950s. She even devotes some space to MCM kitsch, an aspect of the period I'm not particularly interested in, but an enormous number of people were at the time, and it is valuable to know at least something about that particular trend.
All in all, this book will give you more bang for your buck than any I have run across to date. If you're just getting started, or already an old hand, you'll want to add this book to your collection. And it will look great sitting on the pristine glass top of your Noguchi coffee table!
Jetset - Designs for Modern Living: Modern Interiors features some gorgeous homes. This is one of my favorites:
Hi!
Welcome to Mid-Century Modern Interiors.
I confess I started this blog to scratch my own itch, which is my appreciation of the design, architecture, furnishings, art, electronics, and all the rest that made up that remarkable explosion of brilliance and creativity that began in America immediately after the end of WWII and continued for another twelve or so years, say from 1946 to 1958.
The Web is a wonderful place, full of treasures almost too numerous to count, but the problem is finding them. What I hope to do here is to establish a general and wide-ranging repository for all things relating to mid-century interior design, with an emphasis on photographic and video presentations of the interiors, architecture, and popular culture I enjoyed and loved so much.
I will do as much as I can, but I confess, the task will be easier with your help. So I'm asking you for your own contributions, your photos or videos, or your stories and reminiscences of either the past or the present rooms that have made you happy or thrilled you with the descovery of a new way of living, and a new way of looking at the way you live.
Just so you know where I am coming from, here are a couple of snaps of my own living room. I hope you enjoy them!
