High-Style Design, Mid-Style Price 

Furnishing a home has always been a daunting, but exciting, task. Modern furniture from the middle of the 20th century included unique pieces with clean lines and subtle curves that added emotion and interest to a room. America was a leader in midcentury design. A recent sale at Barton’s Auction in Nazareth, Pennsylvania, featured more […]

Walter Lamb Furniture

With outdoor entertaining undergoing a resurgence, iconic midcentury outdoor furniture is getting more attention. Furniture designed by Walter Lamb is considered some of the best from that era. Starting in 1947, Lamb designed patio and yard furniture with distinctive curved lines and durable materials for Brown Jordan, a company founded in 1945. Brown Jordan, still in […]

George Nelson

Furniture from the 1950s continues to be hot among both new and longtime collectors. And no designer says “fifties” like George Nelson (1908-1986), the design director at Herman Miller Furniture Co. from 1945 to 1972. His contract allowed him to work outside the Herman Miller Furniture Company, and in 1947 he opened his own design […]

Radical Design

The radical design movement, which began in Italy in the early 1960s, can be said to be the “high-end Pop-hippie” style. Furniture designers experimented with new materials and designs. The movement lasted only until the middle of the 1970s. Some of the radical designers formed Studio Alchimia (1976) and then the Memphis design group (1981).

Herman Miller

Herman Miller Furniture Company made traditional residential furniture when it started in 1923. When Gilbert Rohde became design director of the Zeeland, Michigan, company in 1932, he realized there was a market for attractive modern furniture, and he completely changed the designs. After Rohde died in 1944, George Nelson became design director. He hired well-known […]

Ettore Sottsass Jr.

Austrian-born Ettore Sottsass Jr. (1917–2007) studied architecture in Turin, Italy, then set up a studio in Milan in 1945. As a consultant for Olivetti in the 1960s, he designed office equipment, including the bright red plastic body for the Valentine typewriter. In the late 1970s, Sottsass joined Studio Alchimia, where he designed plastic-laminate-covered furniture. He […]

Droog Design

Droog Design is a group of Dutch designers founded in Amsterdam in 1993 by Renny Ramakers and Gijs Bakker. Droog designs furniture, art objects, graphics, interiors, and architectural projects. Its work is eye-catching and witty. The Droog philosophy is a reaction to the extreme ideas of the radical designers. Droog’s Chest of Drawers, designed by […]

Memphis

In 1981 Italian designer Ettore Sottsass Jr. organized an Italian design group with the surprising name Memphis to create products in “the new International style.” The furniture, lighting fixtures, jewelry, and ceramics designed by this group were very different from the pieces sold in stores. Memphis design was not understood nor accepted and was a […]

Gio Ponti

Italian architect and designer Gio Ponti (1891–1979) designed everything from art deco ceramics produced by Richard Ginori in the 1920s to printed fabrics in the ’30s, opera and ballet sets and costumes in the ’40s, and the Pirelli office tower in Milan in 1956. His most famous furniture design is the 1951 lightweight Superleggera side […]

Carlo Mollino

Carlo Mollino (1905–1973), is famous as an architect and furniture designer, but he was also an inventor, designer of theatrical scenery, stunt flyer, and car racing enthusiast. He was active in Turin from the 1940s until the 1960s, when a building he considered his most important architectural achievement was demolished and he became so depressed […]