Mid-Century furniture describes tables, chairs, dressers, and desks marked by their clean lines and lack of fussy detail. While many people associate Mid-Century Modern with the years 1945 to 1965, one of the earliest examples of mid-century furniture was actually designed in 1934, when Kem Weber conceived his Airline armchair. A precursor to the flat-pack products sold at IKEA, Weber’s Airline chair streamlined the rigid geometry of Art Deco, had a retail price of just under $25, and was meant to be shipped to customers in a cardboard box, unassembled. Only 200 or so of the chairs were ever produced, though, and even fewer were shipped. Another designer whose work bridged Art Deco and modernism was Alvar Aalto, whose own armchair, model no. 397, was introduced in 1932. Aalto’s armchair, which is sometimes referred to as the Springleaf, was made of bent and molded birch plywood. Aalto’s techniques and materials would be employed even more famously by Charles and Ray Eames, a married couple who, in 1945, figured out how to create strong compound curves in plywood.
One of their first products was a birch child’s chair and stool manufactured by the Molded Plywood Division of Evans Products. The Eameses were more successful than Weber, but the run was still limited to 5,000 pieces, and only 1,000 of their LCW (Lounge Chair Wood) chairs were made. The Eames’ partnership with Herman Miller was more fruitful. With Miller, the Eameses created the DCM (Dining Chair Metal), a two-piece chair whose plywood sections were attached to a chromed frame. They also produced the DAR chair, which had a rigid fiberglass shell that could be molded in a rainbow of colors and set on a variety of metal bases and legs, including a rocker. With Miller, in 1956, the Eameses also produced the Lounge Chair and Ottoman, which featured molded rosewood plywood and leather upholstery. Though mass-produced, examples of these pieces from the late ’50s and early 1960s are staples of mid-century furniture auctions. Other mid-century furniture designers of note included Harry Bertoia, a sculptor whose wire-frame Diamond chairs, made by Knoll, are sometimes mistaken for the work of the Eameses (Bertoia’s goblet-like Bird chair is less easily confused).
Another sculptor, Isamu Noguchi, is probably best known for his glass-top, wood-base coffee table, manufactured by Herman Miller. Noguchi also designed biomorphic sofas for Miller and circular and oval Formica-topped tables for Knoll. In addition to Danish Modern stars such as Arne Jacobsen (his chairs had names like Ant, Egg, and Swan), Finn Juhl (the arms of his throne-like pieces were often made of polished mahogany or teak), and Hans Wegner (Nixon and Kennedy used his furniture in one of their 1960 presidential debates), one of the leading furniture designers of the mid-century was George Nelson. For very different reasons, his fanciful Marshmallow sofa and minimalist Coconut chair, both manufactured by Herman Miller, are icons of 1950s style. Rounding out the era is George Nakashima, who combined the mid-century aesthetic with the rough-hewn naturalism of the 1960s. In a wood Nakashima day bed from 1963, the base and upholstery almost resemble a piece by George Nelson, except for the strategically placed unfinished edge at the top of the bed’s back.
Nakashima desks and coffee tables also feature unfinished edges or unrepaired blemishes, with surfaces made from single planks of thick walnut and other hardwoods. The Mid Century ModernistStephen Coles' really visual blog dedicated to the Modernist era of design from 1940 to 1970 (aka Mid-century Moder… [read review or visit site] Buffalo Architecture and HistoryChuck LaChiusa's wonderful guide to the architecture and history of Buffalo, NY, also happens to host an impressive… Herman Miller Consortium CollectionThis website showcases several hundred pieces of furniture, held by thirteen museums, that were designed for Herman… ChipstoneThis beautiful site showcases the collection of Stanley and Polly Stone of Fox Point, Wisconsin, consisting of earl… Kentucky Online Arts ResourceThis huge online database from the Speed Art Museum is a rich trove of beautiful photos and reference information o… Steven Cabella's personal homage to Charles and Ray Eames.
This site is as clean and visually appealing as the Eame… Work of Charles and Ray EamesThis Library of Congress microsite is an overview of the postwar modern design work of Charles (1907-78) and Ray (1… Classic ModernGet a taste of how homes were lit in the 50s, 60s, and 70s with the Danish retro-style lighting designs featured on… [read review or visit site]random Fayum Sofa Middle White Omnia Elise Barstool - Grey Regular Price: $798.00 Sale: $687.00 Arnaud 5-Piece Outdoor Set - Black Regular Price: $6,300.00 Sale: $3,899.00 5x8 Hand-Tufted Wool Sonia Rug Regular Price: $1,196.00 Sale: $586.00 A Matching Pair Of Jars Regular Price: $396.00 Sale: $337.00 E Barstool Chair In Natural Regular Price: $189.00 Sale: $129.00 Tviet Floor Lamp - Black Matte Regular Price: $899.00 Sale: $299.00 Roland Console Table Walnut Regular Price: $1,047.00 Sale: $729.00 5' X 8' Machine Woven Julie Sisal Beige Rug Regular Price: $229.00 Sale: $189.00 WHAT OUR CUSTOMERS SAY “...They have fabulous mid century furniture, and their service and prices are great” ... more“I couldn't be more pleased with their customer service” ... more“...
Best place for modern furniture. There's always something new going on in this store. I've been dealing with Sit Down New York for months now” ... more“I recently moved to Manhattan from the Caribbean, and wanted basic furniture set up and ready when we arrived in our new apartment. Sit Down NY delivered on all fronts” ... more“My experience at Sitdown was amazing! I finally made my way here after searching for weeks for a modern leather sofabed” ... moreAs Seen InI moved apartments recently and figured I should buy some new furniture to fit the new space: a lounge chair, a couple of lamps, maybe a nightstand for the bedroom. I thought I'd find a wide, even paralyzing range of options, but everywhere I turned stores were pushing variations on the same style: Unadorned, airy, lean and elegant — the sort of home decor that would not be out of place on an episode of “Mad Men.” A single vibe prevailed: Mid-Century Modern.I quickly learned that at some point in the last 10 years (since the last time I forayed into furnishings) the cult of MCM design, once intense but self-contained, had grown into a mass religion.
Long, low couches and womb-style chairs now appear in high-end galleries and discount stores, at the mall and in the auction house. Search Craigslist and you'll see a secondary market for the same material: vintage items from the 1950s and modern knockoffs. There's an opportunity for worship at every price point. The ubiquity of MCM raised a question in my mind: How did we get to be fanatics for a style that, in its original formulation, lasted just a decade, from 1947 to 1957?The classic shapes of Eames and Nelson and Noguchi began their broad resurgence in the early 1990s. That's when the key purveyors of the style from the postwar years, Knoll and Herman Miller, returned to making items for the home after a several-decade-long detour into office furniture.But it was a savvy, style-minded businessman — Rob Forbes, born in Pasadena and based in San Francisco — who made MCM both glamorous and attainable. In 1999, Forbes founded Design Within Reach, a company that would disrupt the furniture business by bringing MCM pieces directly to consumers.
Until that point, people had to buy their MCM through middlemen and showrooms; now they could buy them via catalog and have the pieces delivered from a warehouse.“It's high-quality comfort food,” said Forbes when I asked him to explain MCM's appeal. It's full of joy and optimism, not so serious, easy to appreciate. What's more, he said, each piece had a story to tell, which he took pains to spell out in his catalogs. Design Within Reach offered consumers mini-bios of the auteurs behind the style, and explained the minimalist vision that defined their work. Now everyone could be a connoisseur, gabbing on about the virtues of Mies van der Rohe's Barcelona chair, or Edward Wormley's Janus.Even as Forbes was making MCM the aesthetic of the creative class, mid- and mass-market designers were churning out contemporary imitations. CB2 and West Elm mastered the sleek-yet-simple look. IKEA marched across the United States slinging cheap, MCM-adjacent Scandinavian couches and chairs. At the same time, designer-driving marketing had spread even to superstores;
Michael Graves' post-modern teakettles and toasters were flying off the shelves of Target in 1999 just as Forbes was launching Design Within Reach. Of course, the availability of MCM doesn't explain its desirability. In searching for a “why,” I talked to Wendy Kaplan, who in recent years curated a blockbuster show of modernist design for the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. She had a simple explanation. Mid-Century Modern fell in and out of style, she said, according to the same, generation-skipping pattern that defines so many other retro trends. “You don't like your parents' stuff; you like your grandparents' stuff,” she told me. It's a fine, believable theory. Yet as I talked with everyone I could about the rise and rise of mid-century design, I couldn't help but notice certain moral shadings to the trend — something more than mere grandpa-chic.“Dirty world/clean lines,” one friend wrote on my Facebook page. “Clean and simple lines seem like part of the aesthetic ethos of our times,” another said.
More reporting turned up more allusions to the essential cleanliness of MCM. The same phrases came up in almost every conversation: Clean lines, clean shapes, clean design.Even Forbes had hinted at a moral basis for the trend. “It's so pure,” he'd said. “Once people convert and get it in their soul, they stick with it.”Perhaps the clean designs favored by our grandparents have been subsumed into our broader mania for things that feel natural and organic. If the simple shapes of MCM have been handed down to us from an older generation, that must mean they're good for us — and unspoiled by ill-considered innovation. We think about our health in the same way: Better to avoid newfangled, processed food; better to eat like our ancestors; better not to suffer the new.Taking the long view, though, MCM hardly seems a perfect fit for these contemporary values. After all, it arrived in the postwar years, on a raft of forward-thinking lifestyle innovations that are now in disrepute. Those were another source of crackpot, jet-age optimism.
And in the early days, when MCM was first admired for its “clean design,” the words conveyed the great convenience of using new technology. “The pieces were literally marketed as being easy to clean,” said Lily Kane, director of exhibitions for the R & Company design gallery. Now Kane finds herself amused by all the people on her news feeds championing retro-futurist designs while they indulge in fantasies of a farmstead past — making pickles, weaving blankets. “It's like we want to lead a 19th century lifestyle in a mid-century house,” she told me. Maybe that's the key: MCM does seem like a style meant for bridging eras. Even the name itself, Mid-Century Modern (coined by journalist Cara Greenberg in 1983), hints at old and new at once. It lets us dabble in nostalgia while we maintain the sense of making progress; it helps us to recall a time when the future seemed bright.Simple lines, organic curves: These are calming shapes (“comfort food,” in Forbes' words) that make invention feel familiar.