Knoll Womb Chair
MARCH 2018 | SARASOTA SCENE 57
That includes the cutlery, the
lights, and the Egg and Swan
chairs.
Eero Saarinen designed the womb
chair on a challenge by Florence
Knoll to create a chair she could
curl up in. Its groundbreaking
body design was so technical that
he had to use a boat builder to
create the fiberglass mold.
Modern furniture is often this
marriage of art and function.
Sculptor Isamu Noguchi’s very
distinctive wood and glass coffee
table emphasizes the artistry of
modern furniture design. Its gently
curving clean lines are at once
ethereal and dramatic. The design
is highly practical and looks as
fresh today as it did when it was
introduced in 1948.
Possibly one of the most
recognized modern
pieces is the beautiful
molded plywood lounge
chair.
Ray and Charles Eames
built molded wooden
splits for the Army in
World War II and used that
technology to create many of their
molded wood furniture pieces.
The molded plywood lounge chair
was recognized by Time magazine
as the Best Design of the 20th
Century. The editors described it
as “something elegant, light, and
comfortable. Much copied, but
never bettered.”
Mid-century modern is popular
right now. What should people
know about that?
As it relates to our experience, we
have two categories of mid-century
furniture buyers. Baby boomers
are buying because their kids are
no longer in the house and the
environment is right. They usually
are buying pieces that they had in
their earlier lives and gave away, or
it was something they had always
dreamed about and now have
the means to buy it. The younger
generation learned about midcentury
through the TV program
Mad Men, and that spurred their
interest.
Is it possible to incorporate a few
modern pieces into my existing
décor?
Many of the furniture pieces
can stand on their own without
identifying the entire house as
mid-century or modern. We have
only done one entire house in midcentury
and that is because the
architecture of the house dictated
it. People are buying the licensed
iconic pieces because they are
timelessly designed with the
functionality to last a long time.
Eames Molded Plywood Lounge Chair