Page Not Found Find yard sales near you. You are not locked down to just one location. Add your home, work and even favorite city. Use a specific address for the best results!See Listings Nearest to You!I've seen you in mid-century design books and architecture textbooks and on fabulous websites that I drool over daily and in my dreams. Never, and I mean NEVER, in my wildest dreams did I see you perched so comfortably in my own living room.Yet here you sit, a matching pair of you, and we sit on you. And, wow, are you comfortable. Not to mention striking in your form and perfect in our little ranch house. And to make this whole thing even more unbelievable, you came to me one sunny afternoon as a gift. As in, FOR FREE. And we all know you can be purchased for, you know, around $1000 each. My friend Wendy, who lives right across the street (yep, as in the house you see out the front window here), through a strange series of events, ended up with these Marcel Breuer chairs that she needed to get rid of and she knew who might love them.
And was she right. Except, I don't just love them, I CHERISH them. Designed in the 1920s by a true master of Modernism architecture and furniture, Marcel Breuer, the Wassily chairs came out of the infamous Bahaus movement, of which Breuer was a student and a teacher. The Wassily chair was one of his first and most famous furniture designs, and was made of bent tubular steel and leather in a square, boxy and minimal profile. The chair was re-released in the 1960s (which was when my chairs were made) by an Italian manufacturer. It was at that time it really became known as the Wassily, named for the famous painter Wassily Kandinsky, for whom Breuer made a version of the chair for back in the 20s. Besides this chair, Breuer is also famous for designing such buildings as the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York and many buildings at St. Johns University in Collegeville, Minnesota. I cannot express in written words how excited I am to have these in my life and in my home. Everyone who's come into our house lately comments on them, first because of their uniqueness and second because of their comfort.
What a treat it is to have such good friends, good fortune, and good design. We have fit in a few great nights out, though. We hit the National Oldtime Fiddlers Contest Grand Championship night again in Weiser. This time we double dated with my Grandma and my Aunt Terri after a long day of parades and fair food and yard sales. As always, it's held in the Weiser High School gymnasium and was hot and rocking. (image courtesy of The Sandpiper, Idaho Falls) We have been on vacation more than we've been home this summer and at the tail end of our Wyoming National Parks camping adventure, Eric and I celebrated our tenth wedding anniversary. We just happened to be in Idaho Falls around that date, staying with the inlaws, so we got them to watch the girls so we could have an adult night out on the town. We went with the locals' recommendation and tried The Sandpiper seafood and steakhouse, which has recently been awarded Best Restaurant by Idaho Falls Magazine readers for several years running now.
And it was delicious. I ordered the Mahi Mahi special, which looked much like the above image I stole from their website, except my wine was red and I ordered a whole bottle of it. I did get that baked potato with all the fixins' and it was incredible. Afterwards we walked around downtown Idaho Falls and along the greenbelt before we caught a late show of Robin Hood at the cheap theatre (which, by the way, I really liked. And not only because Russell Crowe is dreamy.) So, after a brief discussion about how we weren't really 'dating' like we were supposed to this summer, we decided to take a hiatus. We're having too much fun to focus on forcing the issue this summer, but have enjoyed the Project 52 challenge and quirky dates together in the beginning and plan to pick them up again in the fall. And it's not just date night we're slackers on this summer, y'all. My Pioneer Woman Cookbook Challenge? It's too damn hot to cook much. My weekly Jazzercise schedule? Cleaning up the house? You should see the jungle of weeds we pulled yesterday and the size of the dust bunnies under our couch.
What we are doing, however, is enjoying life without a schedule and allowing ourselves to be ruled by nothing more than the sun and the moon. A few weeks ago I hosted a recycled craft party for our weekly playgroup. I collect lots of junk and it's always fun to brainstorm ideas on how to use our garbage to create something new and fun. The web has lots of ideas and photos inspiring the creation of shoebox dollhouses for creative play. To make the home designing a bit easier on our young crowd, I precut the cardboard "floors" and glued them in. I had a variety of box sizes to work with, which makes it more fun and some smaller "homes" worked better for My Little Petshops and Polly Pockets. This, of course, appealled to the kiddos. I outfitted our patio with bins of stickers, glue sticks, scissors and a variety of magazines and store mailers to cut out furniture, decor, bedding, pets, and toilets. The kids loved wallpapering with my leftover scraps of Contact paper and had fun flipping through the magazines finding images to fit their floorplan.
Some particularly inspired designers stapled boxes together to create garages filled with recreational vehicles and cars. They turned out super cute and the kids had a great time making them. The project cost nothing and the kids loved incorporating their handmade houses with their well-loved toys. So easy and a great way to use your recycled items for some summer fun.above: Hooper House by Marcel Breuer featured in Dwell The world was shocked by the simple, industrial style that came out of the Bauhaus design school in the 1930s. Coming fresh off the heals of the arts and crafts movement where simplicity and craftsmanship were key, designers in the modern German design school believed form should follow function. Furniture designs of tubular steel and glass were created to be mass produced and easily affordable, without the fuss of superfluous decoration. Due to the political oppression in Germany and Austria (home of the famous Weiner Werkstätte), the Bauhaus closed and prolific designers were scattered across Europe, some fleeing to the U.S. for a chance to successfully produce work in their new style.
This prompted the birth of new design schools like Black Mountain College in North Carolina and Cranbrook Academy of Art in Michigan. The early 1930s began to see collaborations between designers who would become world famous for their iconic furniture designs, architectural endeavors, and even the creation of a groundbreaking design style called International Style. The new look was marked by buildings with large expanses of glass windows, tubular steel frames for furnishings, sleek materials like leather, steel and plastic, as well as generally sparse decorations. Though this modern style movement began in the 1930s, it wasn't until the 1940s that it began to become more widely accepted by the typical American home owner. above: the Gropius house from the Historic New England Properties photographic collection and Martha Stewart Living The above space is a room in the Glass House retreat of Philip Johnson, which really is one wide-open space with glass walls to create a sense of oneness with nature.
The large panes of glass, boxy design and minimalist furnishings make this space a great example of International design. Similar styles can be seen in other works by Philip Johnson as well as in the work of his mentors, friends and collaborators such as Mie van der Rohe (whose Barcelona chairs are pictured above), Le Corbusier, Walter Gropius (founder of the Bauhaus, whose home is shown above this one), Marcel Breuer and even Frank Lloyd Wright. above: the home of Walter Gropius from the Historic New England Properties photographic collection If you're not into modern architecture, an easy way to grasp the style of the Bauhaus and International Style movements is to take a look at the furnishings that came out of this movement. Many of the iconic modern pieces you see in design magazines these days were created by architects and designers from this period of design history. Above left you can see the Barcelona chairs and tables as designed by Mies van der Rohe, and in the image to the right you can see a bent tubular steel chair design by Mies van der Rohe, who was also famous for utilizing a new cantilever style with his MR10 chair design pictured below.
Marcel Breuer created his own version too, which became extremely popular with interior stylists in the 1970s. In general, the minimalist furniture designs of the International Style movement most often utilize materials like tubular steel, leather and glass, but you can find softened versions with the introduction of rattan and wood, as seen in both van der Rohe and Breuer's famous chairs below. You can buy new licensed versions of famous Bauhaus and International furniture designs at stores like Design Within Reach, or you can troll Craigslist and eBay for vintage versions. Usually they'll be pretty pricey, but sometimes a seller doesn't know the value of what they're listing and you'll stumble on a deal. Here are some classics from the Bauhaus and International Style movements available at DWR: 1. The Wassily Chair by Marcel Breuer2. The Barcelona Couch by Mies van der Rohe3. The Barcelona Table by Mies van der Rohe4. The Barcelona Lounge Chair by Mies van der Rohe5.
Adjustable Table E1027 by Eileen Gray6. The Womb Chair by Eero Saarinen7. Laccio Tables by Marcel Breuer8. LC4 Chaise Longue by Le Corbusier, Charlotte Perriand and Pierre Jeanneret9. LC2 Petite Modele Two-Seat Sofa by Le Corbusier, Pierre Jeanneret and Charlotte Perriand Even within the utilitarian design mindset of the Bauhaus, you can find softer styles that work well to soften the hardness of the steel and minimalist International Style designs. Though still modernist and simple in nature, the art and textile designs that came from Bauhaus students help make a cold environment much softer and cozier. Gunta Stölzl and Anni Albers (work shown above) are two of my favorite textile designers that came from the Bauhaus, and Josef Albers (Annie's husband) is definitely my favorite print maker— famous for his color studies in Interaction of Color as well as his print and type design, as shown below. above: Sean Fennessy for The Design Files Most of the time you won't see a room full of cold, industrial-styled furniture, unless you're looking at a masculine, high style apartment of a power broker or something like that.
The colder minimalist designs that came from the Bauhaus and the International Style movement are usually seen mixed with warmer pieces that have soft textures or wooden surfaces. These homes show a more widely accessible interpretation of International Style—clean lines, sturdy materials and a functional arrangement without much fuss. The wood tones and textiles help to warm up the space. Though it isn't a contemporary space, the home of the Bauhaus founder, Walter Gropius, is a great example of a warm interpretation of International Style, thanks largely to the influence of his wife whose love for textiles softened the cold style of much of the home's furnishings. (See the home in the below right image and elsewhere as noted in this post.) above: Elle Decoration UK / Gropius House via Martha Stewart Living above: Drew Kelly for Dwell / below: Knoll Laccio table styling I love the image below, found in a Sydney real estate listing. You'll find tubular steel chairs, a poster design in a style you'd see come out of the Bauhaus school, and a color scheme that fits in perfect with the Bauhaus and International Styles as well—black, white, red and yellow.