Collectors call them "mid-century modern," designed and produced after World War II through the 1950s. While ‘50s fashion was marked by circle skirts and petticoats that crossed the Atlantic Ocean, the showcase of postwar furniture design came from America – though most of the designers were Scandinavians – where materials such as rubber, molded plywood and fiberglass were used in massive quantities for the first time.
Today, these designs are more than 50 years old, yet they fit right into the contemporary home, whether the style is spare Scandinavian or maximalist Indian. They are also very expensive, but if you find yourself rummaging through a garage sale here or abroad (well, chances are bigger abroad), think of those lucky individuals who make legend in the collector’s market: They pay a couple of dollars to unsuspecting owners trying to get rid of old furniture which turns out to be an Eames chair that today costs $10,000. The Internet has brought collecting mid-century modern to new heights with eBay leading the way for private sellers and websites such as gomod.com, designaddict.com, knoll.com and hermanmiller.com educating new and old collectors on the pieces and pointing the way to resources.
Many of the designers were Europeans who migrated to America before the war. Of all the design schools that boasted outstanding designers, it was the Cranbrook Academy in the suburbs of Detroit where luminaries started their careers. This was where Charles Eames met his wife Ray Kaiser, and also where design stars such as Eero Saarinen, Harry Bertoia, Florence Schust (who later married Hans Knoll and they formed Knoll Associates) and Ralph Rapson met.
Two manufacturers stood out as the giants in producing mid-century pieces: Herman Miller in Michigan, which was headed by George Nelson in the 1940s as design director. A trained architect from Yale, Nelson was credited for bringing to Miller talents such as Charles Eames, Isamu Noguchi and Alexander Girard.
The other manufacturer was Knoll in New York (and later Pennsylvania), which hired top designers (and paid them royalties for their designs) like Eero Saarinen, Harry Bertoia, Jens Risom and Noguchi.
While many pieces were a commercial success during their time, a lot more were failures. The good news for collectors is that the pieces were mass-produced, which ensures a thriving market. The bad news is that as these mid-century beauties became more popular after the publication of the book Mid-Century Modern by Cara Greenberg in 1984, knockoffs began showing up on the market. How do you know that what you’re buying is real? Look for the manufacturers’ unique markings, which changed over the years since the pieces were produced on and off in the past 50 years.
Why is it that sometimes you find one design at different prices – selling for hundreds of dollars at one place and thousands of dollars at another? Because they were probably produced at different periods – for instance, a Saarinen chair produced in 1958 is more expensive than one manufactured in 2003 – even if both are original. The most expensive ones, of course, are those from the first year of production.
From the many famous pieces during the period, here are some of our favorite icons:
1. Charles And Ray Eames’ Plywood Chairs, 1945-1946
The LCW (Lounge Chair Wood) was produced in 1945. It’s made of birch-faced plywood frame attached to a molded plywood seat and backed with rubber shock mounts. The LCM (Lounge Chair Metal) has a steel frame attached to animal hide-covered molded plywood seat and back. Considered a landmark in design, the Eameses’ chair resulted from the couple’s development of an efficient method of molding plywood.
In 1940 Charles Eames and Eero Saarinen jointly entered the competition "Organic Design in Home Furnishings" organized by the MOMA in New York. Their entry was drawn by Ray Kaiser, whom Charles married a year later. The entry was comprised of seating using molded plywood in complex curves and rectilinear modular cabinets set on benches.
2. Arne Jacobsen’s Egg Chair, 1957-1958
Jacobsen originally designed this chair for the Royal Hotel in Copenhagen for which he also designed the door handles and lighting. The fiberglass seat is fabric-covered and foam-molded, and has a removable seat cushion. It sits on a swiveling aluminum base. You can find this chair in almost every designer space here and abroad.
3. Arne Jacobsen’s Swan Chair, 1957-1958
Constructed of the same material as the Egg chair, this highly collectible chair also has a sofa version with metal legs.
Jacobsen was born in Copenhagen and was trained as a mason before he studied architecture at the Copenhagen Academy. Most of Jacobsen’s later furniture –including the Egg and Swan chairs – were made by Fritz Hansen.
4. Harry Bertoia’s Diamond Chair, 1952
Bertoia’s wire-shell chair, made of welded steel wire and rod and foam rubber, was an immediate success when it first came out from Knoll International. Fifty-three years later, it is still being produced and is his most famous work even though he also designed jewelry and did sculptures.
Bertoia came to the United States in 1930, when he was 15. He finished high school at the Cass Technical High School in Detroit and then moved to the Cranbrook Academy where he taught metalwork for four years. Here he met Eilel Saarinen and his son Eero, Charles Eames, and Brigitta Valentiner whom he would later marry.
5. George Nelson And Irving Harper’s Marshmallow Sofa, 1956
This whimsical sofa is comprised of 18 round foam cushions floating on the frame, which can be individually detached and replaced or mixed and matched. The sofa comes with a brushed tubular steel frame with black satin legs. The upholstery is usually done in vinyl, crepe fabric or leather.
One of the most original American designers, Nelson was an editor at Architectural Forum and Pencil Points. Apart from furniture and storage systems, he made a name for himself with his Sunburst and Ball clocks (the former inspired by sun rays and the latter by atoms), which became popular consumer products as well as design icons. Vitra Design Museum still produces the clocks.
6. Sori Yanagi’s Butterly Stool, 1954
This extraordinary design incorporates Japanese lines with the Western construction of plywood molding developed by the Eameses. A study in symmetry, the joined wings make for graceful shapes in maple wood with a chrome-finished connector. First designed and manufactured in 1954, the stool now resides at the Museum of Modern Art and Metropolitan Museum of Art.
7. Hans Wegner’s Stacking Chair Model 4103, 1952
Trained as a cabinet maker, Wegner studied at the Copenhagen School of Arts and Crafts, where he later taught. He also worked as an assistant to Arne Jacobsen and Erik Møller, and helped design the Arhus Town Hall in Sweden. His process of design wasn’t quick – he would start with a sketch and then make scale models before producing the prototype – and it is said that then Danish King Frederick IX had to wait two years for a Valet Chair.
Preceding his stacking chair, Wegner’s Chinese chair, which draws on 17th-century Chinese design, provided the basis for many of his later designs, including the stacking chair. He also designed the Round chair, called "the world’s most beautiful chair. Another memorable chair, simply called The Chair, was used in the televised presidential debates between Nixon and Kennedy in 1961.
8. Eero Saarinen’s Tulip Chair, 1955-1956
A pioneer in sculptural furniture, Saarinen was born near Helsinki and moved to the US with his father Eliel Saarinen, where he was trained as an architect at Yale University. For Knoll, he designed several chairs using bent plywood, molded plastic, and chrome steel. But it is the Tulip chair, made of fiber-glass shell on a cast-aluminum base, that his name is most associated with. He also designed the TWA Terminal at JFK Airport in New York (1956 to 1962) and the famous mobile lounges for the airport.
9. Erwine And Estelle Laverne’s Champagne Chair, 1957
The Laverne chair is from the couple’s 1957 series of "Invisible Group." The design predates the popular use of Lucite in the 1960s and 1970s. The Lavernes were trained as painters at the Art Student’s League under Hans Hofmann, after which they decided to focus on design, establishing Laverne Originals in 1938 and later Laverne International. In 1957 the couple came out with their "Invisible Group" of curvy see-through plastic furniture. Reminiscent of Saarinen’s Tulip chair, the Champagne chair has a small upholstered cushion in the seat – the only "visually tangible part." The form was considered futuristic and the material space-age.
10. Arne Jacobsen’s Series 7 Chair, 1955
Probably one of the most copied designs around, this chair is also from one of the most commercially successful lines in the 20th century. Jacobsen was influenced by the Eameses’ molding approach. The thin chair has nine layers of molded veneer and two layers of cotton textile between the veneer layers while the legs are made of polished or satin chrome steel tubing.
11. Verner Panton’s Cone Chair, 1958
Over the course of his design career, Panton deconstructed the chair and reworked the theory on how it should look. Not your usual chair, the Cone chair (and later the Heart chair) looks futuristic and very playful if not downright defiant of its own form. In 1960, Panton would design a similarly shaped chair, but this time in chromed, bent-steel-rod frame. Also in this year, he would design the stacking Panton chair, the first to be produced from a single piece of molded plastic. The chair brought him international fame and it has become one of the most recognizable designs of the 1960s – or even of the 20th century.
Panton was trained at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen and worked at Jacobsen’s architectural firm for two years where, it was said, he didn’t do too well because he was always working on his own designs!