Not all Mid Century Furniture is the Same

Having lived through the 1950's and 1960's and seen some of the "modern" furniture of the time.  I was a little taken back when Lewis said originally that he wanted to change our focus to the 1930's through 1970's designer furniture.  The first  thing that popped into my head was some of the massed produced furniture of that period by Drexel, Lane, and some of the less expensive danish furniture.  I was not aware of the finer furniture of the same period.

The finer pieces particularly those designed by architects were made with some of the same precision and attention to detail as the finer pieces of the 18th and 19th century.  These were not made for the masses.  Sometimes in order to have the appropiate furniture for a particular early modern building, the architect would design everything that was to go into it.  Frank Lloyd Wright was known for doing this here in America and Gio Ponti did this in Italy.  This makes a lot of sense when you consider the use of clean lines and materials in the building. this is not to say that all mass produced furniture of that period was cheaply made. Widdicomb, Dunbar, and Henredon produced high quality designer furniture of the period.

The mistaken opinion is that some of the furniture found in you local thrift shop, or in grandmother's attic is  what mid century is all about.  Occasionally, yes, you might walk into a thrift shop and find a treasure waiting for you, but the odds are against you doing this.  If this were true you would not be seeing the auction results that designer furniture of the mi Twentieth century brings.

Auction prices on pieces by Paolo Buffa, Italian architect designer, have sky rocketed in the last few years.  We have seen sets of dining chairs go from a modest six to eight thousand for a set of eight, recently sell for in excess of $60,000. 

Still we have people, who are not educated in the field, thinking that we are running a used furniture store.  These are people who can not discern the difference in quality, or those who want a piece that is out of their range financially, and can not understand why a certain piece is priced the way it is.  Some people will say, "wow, you have a lot of retro furniture". This is a mistake.  Retro refers to pieces that resemble pieces from the past. In the case of furniture, it implies that pieces are currently produced  and look similar to those made years ago. You can have a retro hair do, but the same hair do in a photo from the 1960's was of the period and not retro.  So much for my pet peeves.  I hope this helps with a better understanding of architect designed pieces done mid twentieth century.