Demand still rising for classic midcentury
Sunset Settings is full of high-end modern furniture, but it’s Eero Saarinen’s fire-red Womb chair that tugs at Houston shoppers wanting a dose of retro style.
Designed nearly 70 years ago by the FinnishAmerican architect, the iconic chair is as popular today as it was when he created it in post-World War II America.
Saarinen’s Womb chair is a standout among many classic designs from that era, when factories regrouped to fill needs at home. GIs were back and in college, marrying and starting families, and they needed things both beautiful and functional.
At the time, it was simply called modern design, with clean lines and bold pops of color that helped the design world at large take a giant step forward. Today we call it midcentury modern, or classic modern design. And it’s more mainstream than ever, as millennials and baby boomers alike embrace its minimalist style.
It seems nearly every furniture and home-décor manufacturer is churning out goods that in some way reach back to the mid-20th century. Herman Miller and Knoll produce authentic furniture from designers’ original plans — types of pieces that are available at Sunset Settings. More loosely designed reproductions abound, too, from affordable pieces at Target to Restoration Hardware’s new-ish modern collection.
Expression of culture
Lynn Goode trades in original collectibles for an international clientele from her Lynn Goode Vintage store on West Alabama.
Goode’s interest in midcentury design came from living it: The baby boomer grew up in Meyerland, surrounded by some of the city’s premiere midcentury residential architecture.
When the former artgallery owner noticed that midcentury pieces by Charlotte Perriand, Jean Prouve, George Nakashima and others were popping up at auctions, she shifted gears and started collecting some herself. Now her home, and her store, are filled with midcentury design.
Since art and design are an expression of culture, pieces that came out of the post-war/Cold War/spacerace years reflect world events, she said. Think duck-and-cover drills, light fixtures that looked like rockets, torpedoes and even satellites.
“The Jetsons” lived in an early-1960s, networkprimetime slot in a futuristic society filled with space flight and robots, but their home furnishings may not have been that far off from the molded plastic chairs designed by Charles and Ray Eames at nearly the same time.
The “British Invasion” of the mid-1960s brought even more creative energy with new clothing styles, music, hair, pop art — exciting new design on every front.
Adapting the classics
Today, great design has become more accessible through pop culture.
Piper Turner, whose mother, Carolyn Brewer, owns Sunset Settings, said their customers come in knowing what they want because they’ve seen it on TV, in magazines or even in their travels.
“I think ‘Mad Men’ started it, but you see these pieces everywhere,” Turner said. “You see them in offices, the Eames aluminum chairs are on all of the (TV) interview shows … They always have an Eames chair and a Saarinen table.”
Turner said many of her customers are baby boomers who are getting rid of their traditional furniture in favor of something more modern.
“The Womb chair has been exceptionally popular again. It’s such a great reading chair,” Turner said. The chair runs from $3,700 to nearly $9,000, plus another $1,100 to $2,000 for its matching ottoman.
Those original designs are adapting to contemporary demands, with the Womb chair now available in a children’s size and a “medium” size for places like New York, where many people live in small apartments. Ludwig Mies van der Rohe’s famed Barcelona chair has been scaled down for children, too.
A year or so ago, Herman Miller began making its classic Eames chair in a version 2 inches taller and deeper, Turner said. Knoll’s Platner table base — curved steel rods adhered to circular frames — now comes in a goldplated version in addition to its original polished nickel.
Collector appeal
Though collectors of all types once shopped at local stores, auctions and estate sales, they now shop the world. Websites such as firstdibs.com are a gathering places for those looking for vintage and antique finds, which can command big bucks.
Goode once had an original 8-foot Nakashima dining table that sold for $65,000 — now, it could sell for twice that. (“If you have one of his pieces you’re in high cotton, as we say in Texas,” she said.) On First Dibs, a pair of Pierre Jeanneret Chandighar chairs has fetched $24,000, and a single T.H. RobsjohnGibbings Klismo chair can cost $12,000. Greg Shannon, a Houston physician, started collecting by accident nearly a decade ago, when a chair in an art gallery — a significant piece of modern furniture, it turns out — captured his attention.
“It spoke to me and had unique and sculptural feel that interested me,” Shannon said. “Contemporary furniture is great, but it blows me away that from the mid-1930s to 1960s, individuals were designing things that were this forward thinking.”
Amy Cherry began collecting in the past year or so. She and her husband, Rick, live in a Pearland home full of traditional furniture and antiques. But Cherry was looking for a cleaner, fresher look for the 4,000-square-foot beach home they’re building on Bolivar Peninsula.
“I went into Lynn (Goode)’s shop, and it was like, ‘This is it,’ ” Cherry recalls of the furniture she now calls “artful” and “thoughtful.” “I fell in love with midcentury furniture.”
And she wouldn’t settle for midcentury-inspired furniture or reproductions — she wanted to buy authentic vintage pieces.
She finds it amusing that the furniture she grew up with is what she’s returning to now.
“It didn’t occur to me that anything I grew up with would be collectible,” Cherry said, adding that her sister initially expressed concern that she’d end up with a living room that resembled a set from the “Brady Bunch.”
But will it go out of style?
Shannon said about 80 percent of the furniture in his home is midcentury modern. His most recent score: an Eames sofa, the last design created by the architecture power couple.
Friends have wondered out loud what he’ll do if or when his furniture goes out of style.
“I’m not buying it because of what’s in, I genuinely dig it. I’m not an investor, I live with it, and I let my children use it,” Shannon said. “It’s in my home, and my home is a place where children are allowed to be children, even if they’re sitting on a Vladimir Kagan sofa.”
Cherry was sold on midcentury design quickly, but it took a little longer for her husband to settle into it. He got a big shock one day when a pair of Percival Lafer lounge chairs replaced his beloved brown recliner.
“He walked in, and his face said, ‘What have you done?’ He loves that chair now,” Cherry said proudly.
She also bought one of those sexy Vladimir Kagan sofas that Shannon owns, as well as other sofas, chairs and tables.
With each new piece, Cherry feels one more step into the next chapter of her life.
“It’s a way that I feel like it’s all brand new. It feels refreshing and clean and a start-over for me and my husband,” she said. “That’s what it represents, a new beginning.”