Ray Kaiser and Charles Eames met in 1940 after Ray entered the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. Charles Eames was there studying with fellow modernist designer Eero Saarinen and would soon become head of the industrial design department.  Eames and Saarinen were working on a design for a molded plywood chair to...

The Model 666WSP Chair, from 1943, is an example of the furniture designed by Danish-American designer Jens Risom, who died at 100 on December 9, 2016. Risom was the son of a prominent Danish architect and he, himself, is often regarded as one of the founders of midcentury modern design in America. He came to...

This chair is believed to have come from the Robert D. Winn House in Kalamazoo, Michigan, one of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Usonian homes— affordable housing designed for middle-class families. The architect used the adjective “usonian” to describe the unique character of the American landscape. Usonian furniture designs were simple and intended to be made on-site...

The Embryo Chair was designed in 1988 by Australian designer Marc Newson, and has come to be seen as a signature object of his organic style. The chair is not only stylish and provocative in appearance, its one-piece form and simple legs belie a sophisticated construction that is the result of Newson’s technical accomplishment early...

Since the publication of his 1966 treatise, Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture, architect Robert Venturi has been considered one of the founders of Postmodernism. Venturi challenged the modernist prejudice against ornament and traditional decorative styles, and questioned the maxim “form follows function.” The Chippendale Chair is one of a series of nine chairs in historical styles he...

Japanese-American sculptor and designer Isamu Noguchi designed this 86T Rocking Stool for Knoll in 1954. Noguchi was born in Los Angeles but lived in Japan until he moved to Indiana at the age of thirteen. After leaving his pre-med studies at Columbia University to pursue sculpture, he went to work in Constantin Brancusi’s Paris studio between 1927 and 1929, exploring abstraction and...

In 2012, under the direction of Stephen Frykholm, Herman Miller, Inc. solicited proposals from a group of international graphic designers for a limited edition poster campaign that would highlight ten of their iconic products still in production.  Ten posters, produced in a edition of ten copies of each, were printed and exhibited in a small...

Edward Wormley was the primary designer for the Indiana-based furniture manufacturer Dunbar from 1931 to 1967, responsible for securing Dunbar’s reputation as a leader in modern American furniture production. In January of 1932 Dunbar released Wormley’s first pieces which were authentic adaptations of historical forms including a Chippendale sofa in the collection of the Metropolitan...

The French designer and architect Marc Held has worked across various media, forms, and dimensions, from teapots to automobiles, and wristwatches to cruise ship interiors. His intrigue with the possibilities of kinetics in furniture design drove him to develop the “Culbuto” furniture series in 1967. Made up of a low-back armchair, a high-back armchair and...

Resembling a child’s toy more than a piece of furniture, the whimsical form of the Spun Chair, designed by Thomas Heatherwick and his team, Heatherwick Studio, came about in answer to the question, ‘Can a rotationally symmetrical form make a comfortable chair?’ Heatherwick and his colleagues were initially inspired by the traditional manufacturing process of...

The Cross Check Chair is named after a hockey infraction in which a player holds their stick vertically and blocks another player, illegally checking them. The name is also a reference to the seat of this chair, which is made out of interwoven maple plywood strips, creating a check pattern, and a double meaning of...

This chair is not comfortable to sit on, which defies the idea of a chair. But it is sublime and necessary. What is the obligation of the designer? What are we supposed to feel or do with the things around us? Reitveld was rigorous about what he would allow in a room. That is a...

Cooper-Hewitt’s Design Watch Members visited Steelcase for a private tour of the showroom and sunset reception on the terrace overlooking Columbus Circle. Lew Epstein presented the trends behind media:space, the convergence of furniture and technology, changing the way we think of work spaces as collaborative “destinations”. Members also previewed the Cobi chair, featured in the...

1. I was delighted to see that Lerival – Furniture by Architects is carrying Morehead & Morehead’s brilliant Felt Stool (1). This is currently produced in synthetic automotive felt, which is the only reason I didn’t include it in Fashioning Felt. Otherwise its simple folded form says, in brief, everything I love about felt.  ...

Brazilian designers Humberto and Fernando Campana will receive the prestigious Designer of the Year Award at this year’s Design Miami. Earlier this year, the brothers mined the museum’s collection and chose a diverse group of more than thirty objects, dating from the sixteenth to the twentieth centuries for the Campana Brothers Select: Works from the...