Hot or Not...

I know, I hear the voice of Bruno, too. Not the point. The point is...

Mid Century Modern: Hot or Not?

one of my pair of LCW chairs

I have heard rumblings in the blogosphere lately that its NOT, as in NOT HOT.

I have the stamps, too. I keep them with my diploma. Both await framing.

If Mid Century Modern is OVER, that means that the Eames, the emblematic icons of the movement that elevated design to an agent of social change, the married team whose work made contributions to industrial design, architecture, film & furniture design, the duo who designed the chair responsible for transforming the way I looked at objects of design, are OUT?

I have the model in my collection of chair models.

After the LCM suffered a fall, I glued that guy painstakingly back together,

he wasn't going to die on my watch, no Sir, even if he IS plastic.

Nope.

The Eames and my beloved chairs are not NOT HOT.

Because good design never goes out of style.

Ever sat in an LCW (that's low chair wood)?

I remember the first time I did. I remember where I was. I remember what I was wearing. I was a junior at The University of Georgia. Our class traveled to San Francisco to take in the city's architectural highlights and visit some of its firms. We were waiting in the lobby of a firm (I don't remember the firm). In that lobby were a line of perfect little LCWs sitting on a floor of gleaming white Cararra marble. They looked cool that was my first impression, but we had to wait a while. So I sat in one.

Lowered my butt down on that hard wood surface and was immediately struck by something unexpected:

how comfortable the little anthropomorphic chair was.

Its curves conformed to my body, supporting my limbs. Now this, I remember thinking, is design.

"What...works is better than what looks good," Ray Eames said. "The looks good can change, but what works, works."

After earning them first prize in 1940's New York Museum of Modern Art's Organic Design in Home Furnishings Competition, the Eames pioneering molded plywood technique garnered the attention of the US Navy. In 1943 Charles & Ray developed light weight, inexpensive, durable leg splints that could be easily mass produced & transported- to help injured servicemen. This access to the military's manufacturing & technology facilities allowed the pair to perfect their technique. According to The Met, the splint's "three dimensional biomorphic form" informed the pair's subsequent furniture designs that we know so well even today.

image via The Metropolitan Museum of Art

So that's why my chair is comfortable! These guys knew what they were doing. There is more to the LCW than meets the eye and there is more to all good design than what meets the eye.

When guests come over and ask if I got my beloved chairs at IKEA, I invite them to sit in the chair, to truly experience them, and perhaps to have that same awakening that I had while waiting in the lobby of that San Francisco office.