Alvar and I

From our 50′s couch

Alvar and I — Mon, 11 Jul 2011 02:03:43 +0000

1. Willy Van Der Meeren designed: yours for € 400.000, including the Friso Kramer chairs (City Furniture via Reference Library)

2. Two Boomerang chairs find a beautiful home (via Atelier)

3. Too fashionable now: Prouvé x G-Star Raw

Bauhaus in Mexico

Alvar and I — Mon, 04 Jul 2011 01:40:08 +0000

Discovered recently: modernist furniture designers in Mexico while looking up Klaus Grabe material and the MoMA 1941 competition ”Organic Designs for Furnishing” (hopefully more on both later).

It is well known that after the Bauhaus was forced to close in 1933, most of its artists found refuge in the United States. But the Bauhaus diaspora also reached less likely places like Palestine, South Africa or Mexico. In Mexico, the spirit of the Bauhaus left a strong legacy of Mexican modernist furniture designers: Clara Porset, Arturo Pani, Pepe Mendoza, Luis Barragan, Francisco Artigas, and Michael Van Buren. If you want to know more check this article (Word document) by Jorge S Arango and this one by Oscar Salinas Flores (in Spanish; Google translates it fairly well).

Anni and Joseph Albers, the most famous of the Bauhaus expatriates associated with Mexico, frequently came from nearby U.S. to visit Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, among others. The Albers also visited Clara Porset. Porset, who became interested in the Bauhaus while visiting Europe, was a former student of Joseph Albers at Black Mountain College.

Clara Porset – El Butaca Chair

Other Bauhaus alums that came to Mexico include Hannes Meyer, and closer to our vintage pursuits, Klaus Grabe and Michael Van Beuren. Grabe, another Albers student, Van Beuren, also a former student of the Bauhaus, and Morely Webb together won first prize for a lounge chair in the 1941 MoMA competition. (Mexico scored a double as Porset also won a prize). The chair was subsequently edited by the company Domus, established by the three designers as the premier modern furniture editor in the country.

Organic furniture competition lounge chair

Grabe soon left Mexico to settle in New York where he ran Klaus Grabe Inc. and pursued his quest for modern low-cost furniture, including plywood variations of the Organic furniture competition winner.

Michael Van Beuren stayed in Mexico, where he started a company in his own name. His work has recently been rediscovered thanks to last year’s exhibition “Footprints of the Bauhaus” at the Museo Franz Mayer in Mexico city.

Domus chair – Michael Ban Beuren and Klaus Grabe (c. 1942)

Reminds one of something…

Guiseppe Pagano Pogatschnig – Chair for Bocconi University (c. 1940)

From our 50′s couch

Alvar and I — Mon, 20 Jun 2011 00:22:02 +0000

1. Vintage dealers’ choices of interior, via the always reliable Mondoblogo

2. A visit of George Nakashima’s workshop by Papersky (HT: Reference Library)

3. More online reference: Eero Saarinen design archive, and bonus: a conversation on the furniture of Saarinen both via Mid-Centuria.

Criminal designs

Alvar and I — Sat, 11 Jun 2011 01:22:52 +0000

Watched Mesrine: Killer Instinct last night. Very good movie about the French Clyde Barrow of the 60s and 70s. Not a very nice guy, flamboyant, serial jail escapist, with a knack for attracting media attention while escaping the police. He met his end in 1979 in a shootout with police in the streets of Paris.

The movie is a nice period piece from the mid to late sixties. So we were enjoying the movie with half an eye on interior scenes to spot any nice period piece of furniture. The surprise however came early in his criminal career, in 1963, when Mesrine is offered a job after his first jail stint (no escape yet). The short-lived job, the only proper one Mesrine would ever have, was with an interior architect called Boris Tabacoff. So much for the redeeming qualities of interior design…

Tabacoff is a well-know name for collectors of plexiglas furniture. He was edited by the esteemed French editor Mobilier Modulaire Moderne.

Sphere chair

In an interior designed by Maria Pergay. The chair were sold at a recent Artcurial sale.

Goldfinger… Ernö Goldfinger

Alvar and I — Wed, 08 Jun 2011 02:29:49 +0000

Everyone who has lived in London is somehow familiar with Ernö Goldfinger. He was one of the leading modernist (some would say brutalist) architects based in Britain, and is most remembered for the Trellick Tower in North West London and the Elephant and Castle development. Both were copiously hated by Londoners.

Goldfinger lent – without his conscent – his surname to Auric Goldfinger the über James Bon villain, following a dispute with Ian Flemming over the construction of his modernist house in West Hampstead. It probably did not help that Ernö was not all sweetness.

Ernö Goldfinger had also a thing or two to say about furniture. The Guardian just published a nice piece on Goldfinger’s house on Hampstead Heath and its furniture. Additional pictures and info can be found on The Sneaky Magpie‘s blog. Goldfinger also published a book called British Furniture Today. See this recent article from Interior Design.

(Cherrill Scheer & Associates drawing)

From our 50′s couch

Alvar and I — Sun, 05 Jun 2011 22:12:10 +0000

1. Essential viewing: Oda Noritsugu’s (he of Danish Chairs) house via Kitka Design

From Oda’s collection…

2. Dieter Ram’s house featured in The Telegraph. White. (HT: Modern Findings)

3. California, surf, and Robin Day? Nice Nelson CSS too.

Low Cost Furniture Competition: 1949

Alvar and I — Sun, 05 Jun 2011 19:59:42 +0000

With the Internet, serendipidity takes a whole new meaning. Stumbled recently upon MoMA’s press releases of the iconic Low Cost Furniture Competition: here is the press release announcing the winners, and here is the exhibition press release. The competition advert can be seen here. See also here for a candid discussion of production challenges .

The 1949 International Low Cost Furniture competition revealed to the public Don Knorr, Robin Day, and Ernest Race. The competition was featured in Life magazine and Der Spiegel.

With about 3,000 entries, the list of designers who submitted reads like a Who’s Who of 1950s design and architecture: Marcel Breuer, Ilmari Tapiovaara, Hans Wegner, Marco Zanuso, Franco Albini, Jorn Utzon and Willy Guhl among them. Here is an overview of the competition catalog courtesy of Modernism 101.

Don Knorr chair – upholstered

The brainchild of Edgar Kaufmann Jr., the competition used the successful formula of the MoMA 1941 “Organic Designs and Home Furnishing” of collaboration between MoMA and retailers (Kaufmann was the son of the owners of Kaufmann’s department store in Pittsburgh). You could well say that Edgar Jr. was a man of taste and vision having studied with Frank Lloyd Wright and being of the Kaufman family that commissioned the Fallingwater house in 1936.

he has the right to look pretty smug, no?

Some of the furniture presented at the competition…

Robin Day and Clive Latimer storage unit

Alexey Brodovitch chair (3rd prize)

Charles Eames- La Chaise: it was not so low cost, so it did not win (2nd prize)

From our 50′s couch

Alvar and I — Wed, 20 Apr 2011 02:11:38 +0000

1. Charlotte Perriand: De la photographie au design, currently in Paris. How organic forms inspired the furniture of Perriand. Check the Wallpaper* gallery. Fascinating.

the model

its interpretation

2. Another Wallpaper* gallery treat, the Days exhibition at Pallant House Gallery.

3. Featured in this month edition of Dwell and elsewhere on the web sphere, the 23.2 house of Omer Arbel. Love the book shelf in the open living room.

Fay meets Florence

Alvar and I — Sat, 16 Apr 2011 16:31:25 +0000

We watched Network last night. 1976 was a terrific year for US movies. Lumet knew how to film New York, and the first shots panning the MGM building midtown (one of the numerous buildings designed by Emery Roth & Sons) show that he knew his modern architecture repertoire.

But the true reason for this post is that we could not help spotting the Knoll Partners desk in the corner office of the smart, unscrupulous and ambitious TV exec Diana Christensen. Cool and sleek: a good match. It does not harm the eye that Faye Dunaway is sitting on it.

Produced in mahogany, oak, rosewood, teak and ebonized wood

The drawers are nicely concealed

Chandigarh: The Auctioneer Replies

Alvar and I — Sat, 02 Apr 2011 12:25:36 +0000

Chandigarh’s treasures keep selling well. Several went several times above their estimate at the last Wright auction on 31 March (hammer price of $88,900 for the Pierre Jeanneret sofa below). Answering to the attempts by the government of India to have the items removed from the auction, and the controversy surrounding their sale, Wright has put a statement on their website.

The note is quite informative. According to Wright, and this is not really a surprise, the government of India just a few years back left the furniture decaying and sold it at local auctions. French dealers (we think Eric Touchaleaume is one of them) bought some of the furniture back and restored it. Wright also claim the moral high ground – a more dubious argument in our view – when arguing India did not take steps to recognize the furniture as art treasures, while collectors and auction houses actually support their preservation. The note does not say if there have been attempts by India to buy the furniture back at a fair price that would cover the costs incurred by those who salvaged the furniture.

The good faith of dealers does not seem in doubt, and the sellers may have the law on their side. You could argue the same of the Elgin marbles too, but is not the rightful place of the Jeanneret furniture in India rather than in the home of a billionaire?