Our last short visit to London for the Design Festival was extremely interesting and rich with nice designs and furniture. One of our discoveries was the Rocket Gallery.
Although the current exhibition is about post-war Dutch design, we spotted few contemporary pieces with a clear Mid-century inspiration: we found out to be reissues of Jens Risom’s 50s and 60s designs.
The Isamu Noguchi Akari lamp -inspired by the traditional Japanese paper lanterns- is one of the design icons of the last century.
To be completely honest with you, before starting Mid Century Home I never heard of Isamu Noguchi and his works…but from the first moment I saw his objects and sculptures, I started to love them 🙂
The Achille Castiglioni Arco floor lamp has been one of my favorite lamps ever and -after the Achille Castiglioni Biography and the post about the Toio lamp- today I decided to finally write about it.
The Achille Castiglioni Arco floor lamp has been inspired by a common object: a street lamp.
The Isamu Noguchi coffee table is the today’s iconic mid century object. I’m lucky to see it every day from real -it’s in the hall of my office- and I can say to know it quite well 🙂
Who Isamu Noguchi was? A Short Biography.
Since its launch in 1948, the Womb Chair designed by Eero Saarinen has been always in production and definitely is one of the most known pieces of mid century furniture ever.
The shape of the Womb chair is the result of Saarinen’s experiments with organic shell-type seats for furniture design. Saarinen started his experiment with Charles Eames during the ‘Organic Design in Home Furnishings’ competition in 1941 during which they presented the ‘Conversation, Relaxation and Lounging’ trio.
Within the many famous Italian mid-century modern designs, the Achille Castiglioni Toio Lamp has undoubtedly a primary role.
Even though Achille was the most known of the Castiglioni brothers, he worked closely with his older brother Pier Giacomo to many projects until his premature death in 1968; both concentrating on the same task, rather than dividing up the work.
Since a while I had the idea to build a page that was a good starting point for the new readers and a specific archive for posts about the iconic objects that made the mid-century design’s history.
Posts like the Aalto’s Savoy vase or the Jacobsen’s Egg chair -to mention a couple of them- were really appreciated by you guys so,..
After the Wire Chair and the Eames Screen, today I want to put the spot on another revolutionary product designed by Charles and Ray Eames: The Eames Storage Unit. Probably one of the most desired mid-century modern furniture by folks like us. 😉
The ESU was born to be a flexible and innovative product, it was the result of different assembled parts available in many combinations and materials.
I’m a curious person, I like to ‘investigate’ and learn as much as possible about what I like: especially about Mid-Century design.
Few days ago I was thinking which object should have I choose for the today post. I wanted to write about something that is usually not mentioned within the most famous works of Charles and Ray Eames but that had an interesting story anyway.
Choosing the right flowers is important, but what about the vase? During the Mid-Century millions of different vases were designed, but probably the most iconic one -since it was born- is the Aalto’s Savoy vase designed in 1936.
The main characteristic of the Scandinavian design is the organic form of furniture and objects and, as I already wrote in
If I think to Mid-Century, I can not avoid to think to the Arne Jacobsen Egg Chair.
Probably one of the most famous chairs ever designed during the Mid-Century, the Arne Jacobsen Egg Chair takes its name from the similarity with a broken eggshell and because of its ‘wrapping’ shape it’s considered the modern version of the Georgian wing armchair.
The Charles Eames Wire Chair is an iconic seat with sculptural qualities difficult to find in those years. Even though its design recalls previous fibreglass chairs, the Wire Chair was manufactured using a very different technology.
The rim of the chair is a double light-gauge wire without cross-weaving on the external borders, this ‘tricks’ made…
One of my favorite series of lamps ever are the Poul Henningsen PH Lamps; the PS Artichoke in particular.
Poul Henningsen was one of the most famous mid-century modern Danish designers and it comes with no surprise that almost all his designs are still manufactured by the Danish company Louis Poulsen.
If you don’t know it, the Royal Hotel in Copenhagen was entirely designed by the Danish Modern architect Arne Jacobsen in the 1950s and built between the 1958-1960: one year later his famous floor lamp.
We all are Mid-Century fans, isn’t it?
There’s a personal component in our personal mid century craziness because we like the design, but the market stimulates it as well!
I just read, but maybe is an old news for some of you, that Herman Miller introduced new colors for the addictive Eames molded plastic chairs range.
Aalto belongs to a generation of architects that were not only buildings designers.
As many other architects -like Le Corbusier, Gropius, Gaudi’, Wright etc.- Aalto decorated also the houses he designed.
