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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

Gaetano Pesce

Gaetano Pesce (1939–present), known for his unusual designs and materials, worked in Italy and the United States. His UP series of chairs, introduced in 1969, was a set of seven chairs made of molded polyurethane foam. They were compressed in a vacuum chamber until flat and packaged in a plastic envelope, so they were easy […]

Charles and Ray Eames

Charles (1907-1978) and Ray (1912-1988) Eames, two of the most important furniture designers of the twentieth century, designed furniture that was in good taste but not expensive. They met at the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Michigan, married then moved to Los Angeles in 1941. The Eameses experimented with molded plywood and produced leg splints […]

Finn Juhl

Finn Juhl (1912–1989) is one of the best known designers of the Danish Modern style that became popular in America in the 1950s. Juhl was born in Copenhagen. He studied architecture, but by the 1940s he focused on furniture and interior design. Juhl is known for the “floating” back and seat that seem to hover […]

Alessandro Mendini

Italian designer Alessandro Mendini (1931–2019) was a creator of “radical designs” for Studio Alchimia. He often ignored the simple lines of modern design and instead used new materials to make the elaborate shapes and patterns of the nineteenth century. His best-known work includes the Proust armchair that looks like an overstuffed Victorian piece with carved […]