In 1959 Alexander Girard was commissioned to design the interior of the New York restaurant La Fonda del Sol, a commission for which Charles and Ray Eames designed the seating. Yet whereas the La Fonda dining chair and La Fonda side chair are well-known, if currently out of production, components of the Eames' canon, what of the La Fonda bar stool....... La Fonda Bar Stool by Charles and Ray Eames Housed on the ground floor of the, then, new Time & Life building on Manhattan's Rockefeller
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In 1947 the American designer Edward J Wormley reflected in the New York Times on what contemporary furniture could, should, be, and amongst his thoughts on beds, chairs, storage units et al, opined that "an ideal table would be a flat plane suspended in space", and that not least because "it's the legs that are the big nuisance". "Can we find this kind of furniture in today's market?", he asked his readers, albeit, rhetorically, "You know we can't."1 Which tends to imply Wormley didn't visit
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"Dear Architect" wrote Maria Chinaglia Ponti in 1967 to the architect, but no relation, Gio Ponti, "why don't you design us some modern furniture? Daddy Walter is worried because our traditional stuff is not selling as it used to".1 An unsolicited request, from a company of whom he'd never heard, an architect of the status of a late 1960s Gio Ponti could have turned down, it wasn't as if a late 1960s Gio Ponti needed the commission; however, something about the letter from Maria Chinaglia
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"The placing of foam mattresses, spring mattresses, and the like, on bed frames made of wood or metal is familiar", notes a July 1966 patent application, and it was. However, it continues, "bed frames of this type are heavy, continually take up one and the same space in a room, must be dismantled if they are to be moved to a new location, and represent a major obstacle in context of cleaning the bedroom."1 Which, certainly in the early 1960s, they were and did. But what is one to do? Verner
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Throughout his numerous lives and careers Isamu Noguchi practised as an artist, set designer, garden designer, furniture designer, lighting designer, etc.... yet through all incarnations he remained one thing: a sculptor. Isamu Noguchi's most popularly known work is inarguably his Akari lamps, yet before Akari there came a lamp which in many regards exists more in context of the man and his art than its more famous relations..... Lost Furniture Design Classics: Model 9 Table Lamp by Isamu
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In context of the Radio smow Sofa, Couch, Settee Playlist we briefly discussed the settle as an early forebearer of the settee. Existing in a myriad expressions and forms, one variation on the settle was a pleasingly multi-functional, multi-talented, culinary adept, object. And one that has, sadly, vanished from the contemporary furniture landscape....... An early 19th century English bacon settle Originating in the middle ages, John Gloag suggests they were known as early as the 12th
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One of the inescapable features of our recent #campustour was the number of projects exploring potential, possible, new materials, including, and amongst many others, egg shells, eelgrass and chitosan. Explorations whose relevance and importance was neatly underscored post-tour by the exhibition Pure Gold. Upcycled! Upgraded! at the Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg. Beyond the questions posed by the projects themselves, the experimentation we've seen these past few weeks has increasingly
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Celebrating the Renaissance era humanist and author Thomas More's contribution to the history of furniture design. And a work sadly now as lost as his fabled commonwealth.... Abraham Ortelius' map of Utopia (ca 1595) (Source https://commons.wikimedia.org/) Utopia: Then as now In late December 1516 the Flemish printer Dirk Martens published the first edition of Utopia by Thomas More, a retelling by More of an account of a far off commonwealth, one so strictly, logically and naturally governed
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Amongst the objects Jasper Morrison selected from the Museum für Gestaltung Zürich’s archive for the "MyCollection" section of his Thingness retrospective is/was a prototype for a wooden rocking chair by the Swiss designer and architect Jacob Müller. A wooden rocking chair from the 1920s. Which belongs in the 2020s. In the exhibition notes Jasper Morrison states that “the addition of the rocking function is also part of its appeal” Part? In as far as 95% can be considered a “part”, then
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In his Letter of Reference for Christian Dell on the occasion of his departure from the Kunsthochschule Frankfurt, the school's Director Fritz Wichert wrote: "...highly distinguished as college lecturer, silversmith and as an inventor and designer for the lighting industry. His technical ability, his sense for structure and the beauty of materials and his noble, uncluttered forms make him in my opinion the leading figure in this field in Germany."1 A perfect demonstration of what Fritz Wichert
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One of the biggest disappointments of Milan Furniture Fair 2015 was that all manufacturers, or at least all the ones we visited, seem almost pathologically intent on maintaining the convention of a chair as a legged and/or cantilevered object which supports the human frame in an elevated position circa 40 - 45 cms above the floor and with the lower leg extended away from the body. Yet changing technology is resulting in a need for new chair typologies, for chairs which offer alternative
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There is currently a lot of "buzz" in the contemporary furniture and interior design communities about bringing nature in to domestic spaces, of finding ways of integrating plants with furniture and furnishings, softening our harsh, uncaring modern world if you will. In recent months we have posted, for example, on Stephan Schulz's Domestic Landscape project, Green Lamp by Zuzanna Malinowska or Werner Aisslinger's Bikini Island concept for Moroso. While at the recent Designers' Open Leipzig
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We know what you're thinking, lost furniture designs from Eero Saarinen and Charles Eames. ??? Yup. Two of the most important, influential and best known protagonists of mid-century modern design have a product series that has vanished without trace. And in our opinion it vanished exactly because Saarinen and Eames are two of the best known protagonists of mid-century modern design. But let's start at the beginning.... In 1940 the Museum of Modern Art New York staged their "Organic Design
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If you visit the London Design Museum's new permanent collection exhibition "Extraordinary Stories About Ordinary Things" you will be treated to a most rare and wonderful piece of British modernist furniture, an object labelled simply: "Table for display of trousers" Created in 1936 by the English architect Joseph Emberton for Simpsons of Piccadilly, it is not only an object as unique in form as in function, but an object which brought us very much to mind of a fantastic collection of long
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At the same time as he was developing the Ant Chair, Arne Jacobsen created a one-off range of office furniture that arguably represents the first tangible evidence of his move away from the natural materials and traditional handicrafts of his pre-war furniture and onto the mixed media, industrial products that have ultimately come to define his work. And so can truly be considered great lost furniture design classics. Not least because they really are lost! In 1951/52 - the records are a
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Back in January we published a post looking at IMM Cologne 1962 and setting that year's exhibition in the context of what we could all expect at IMM Cologne 2012. Amongst the material we read and reviewed in preparing the post the page that made the biggest impression on us was an advert for Sesam-Bar by Oeseder Möbel-Industrie: a small corner unit containing a rotating interior compartment with bookshelves on the front and a mini-bar on the back. The name coming of course from "Open Sesame":
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The history of furniture design is strewn with works that briefly graced the public stage before vanishing without the honour of a curtain call. Crawl through the cellar of any major furniture producer and you'll find them; the perfectly mummified remains of genuine design classics that failed to transform their creative majesty into hard cash. Such as the so-called "Girard Group" by Alexander Girard. Although best known for his textile and wallpaper designs Alexander Girard wasn't averse to
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