Arne Jacobsen designed the Royal Hotel in Copenhagen and all of the furniture (including the silverware!). The hotel has preserved only one room in the hotel to be completely original: Room 606. The hotel is mentioned in this Euromaxx doc.
The chairs pictured here are “Drop” chairs (or Dråben, as Jacobsen would have said in Danish). They were manufactured by Fritz Hansen exclusively for the hotel in 1958.
One of my favorite new furniture lines is MASH Studios’ LAX series designed by Bernard Brucha who has done work for Martha Stewart, Siemens, Ogilvy & Mather, Toyota, and MTV. The designs are clean, mid-century inspired, and all are built with beautiful walnut and aluminum. Made from multiple planks of solid wood, these pieces are an alternative to traditional wooden case goods with a plane of continuous veneer.
Above: LAX Platform Bed — Available in queen or king sizes with wall-mounted, sliding door headboard.
Thanks to the anonymous suggestion via our feedback forum, here’s another great Eames film. Made for Herman Miller, it covers the fiberglass chair manufacturing steps in visual detail. There is even a (regrettably short) bit on the design process at the beginning, demonstrating again that the Eameses were as dedicated to comfort as they were aesthetics.
Thanks to Brooklyn Modern for posting this video of actress Rene Russo visiting furniture designer Sam Maloof who turns 93 in January. Some good inspirational nuggets in there about age and vitality.
Maloof is considered by many to be America’s greatest living woodworker. He turned down millions to mass produce his work and continues to make everything in his own studio, completing about 50 pieces a year. The Wood Working Channel has a full day of video with the artist telling stories and demonstrating technique. It’s fascinating stuff.
Maloof is probably most famous for his spindled rockers, but he has designed around 500 pieces, some of them more modern in style.
Finally, a video tour of his home and workshop, complete with melodramatic narration.
I may have to take a trip to London just to see the V&A Museum’s Cold War Modern, “the first exhibition to explore international developments in modern art, design, architecture and film in the context of the Cold War”. The microsite offers several videos, including these two from white hot industrial design guru Dieter Rams who thinks it a fine compliment that Jonathan Ive has borrowed so many of Rams’ ideas from the ’60s for today’s Apple products.
While we’re on the topic of desks, here’s one that looks like a contemporary piece inspired by the mid-century modern aesthetic, perhaps designed within the last 10 years. I was surprised to learn it was actually born in 1949. The contour and combination of materials in the Cavour Writing Desk were truly ahead of its time. Its designer, Carlo Mollino, was a remarkable character himself. From designboom:
Design Within Reach has republished a seminal photo from a 1961 issue of Playboy magazine. In DWR’s latest issue of Design Notes (a newsletter which I highly recommend) Jens Risom writes about the photo shoot and his regret that he didn’t get to know the other men that day as well as he would have liked. He did, however, know Mr. Eames well enough to call him “Charlie”.
These fantastic images of Finn Juhl’s home captured by photographer Roger Valentin Mandt exemplify everything I adore about scandinavian mid-century design. Each piece of furniture is practical, human-sized, tempered with an organic form made of teak and other warm woods. The rooms are cozy and comfortable, with calm tones, punctuated here and there by bright, primary color. It’s the kind of home I aspire to create one day.
