Mid-Century Modern Design
The international modern design of roughly 1945 to 1970: light, open forms in wood, moulded plywood, plastic and metal for everyday living.
No works indexed yet · 10 related artists
No open-access works for Mid-Century Modern Design are in the index yet. They will appear here as more collections are indexed.
About
The label is younger than the furniture it describes. It came into wide use after Cara Greenberg's book Mid-Century Modern (1984), and now covers design from about the end of the Second World War to the close of the 1960s. The movement inherited the Bauhaus faith in function and industry but softened it with organic curves, warm woods and a friendlier scale suited to smaller homes.
In the United States George Nelson's Coconut Chair (1955) and the Eameses' shell chairs relied on industrial processes; in Denmark teak and handwork prevailed; in Japan Sori Yanagi's Butterfly Stool (1954) joined two identical bent plywood forms; in France Jean Prouvé worked in folded steel. Look for tapered legs, cabinets that seem to float, moulded seats, sparing ornament and open room dividers. By the 1960s Eero Aarnio's fibreglass globe chairs pointed towards Pop, and interest in the era returned strongly from the 1990s.
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