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AMERICAN MODERN TAKES A BOW

American Modern

Prewar furnishings did not work in postwar homes. Young people married earlier, had more babies, and moved to suburbia, where the homes were different from town houses or city apartments. increased building costs shrank room sizes, lowered ceilings, and reduced the number of rooms and closets. Double-duty living areas, more open and spacious rooms, and fewer walls were also the style of the day.

Modern Furniture for the Modern House

Lower, more simple furniture was needed, and talented architects and designers were more than willing to oblige. Indeed, many of the most influential designers of furniture and home furnishings in the 1950s were architects, for they designed the modern houses that could not be furnished with what was on the market. Today, one refers to 1950s furniture as "American modern"—austere, functional, mass-produced, often of synthetic materials like molded plastic and plywood laminate. But American modern is actually an amalgam of the German Bauhaus principles and Scandinavian influence.

Bauhaus Heads West

The Bauhaus, a German architectural school begun by Walter Gropius, was founded on the principles of industrial technology and prices affordable to the masses. When the Bauhaus was closed by the Nazis in the 1930s, several of its leading proponents came to American universities, where they taught modern design. At about the same time Scandinavian design—the so called Danish modern look—became influential in America.

New Design Meets America's Tastes

In the late 1940s and the 1950s American designers such as Charles Eames, Eero Saarinen, Hans and Florence Knoll, George Nelson, and Harry Bertoia created furniture that combined Bauhaus and twentieth-century Scandinavian design aesthetics. The result was a completely new style that appealed to a victorious America: American modern. It was characterized by straight lines or simple curves, broad and unusually flat surfaces, and the absence of carving or other ornamentation. It was, as writer Tom Wolfe called it, bare and spare. And it was often made of revolutionary new materials.

MOMA

The American modern look was given wholehearted support and nudges by the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) in New York City. Its directors liked the Bauhaus outlook and wanted the American public to like it, too. Throughout the late 1930s and into the 1940s MOMA sponsored several exhibits to introduce Americans to functional, mass-produced, trim furniture and housewares. Eames and Saarinen won best of show at one of these early exhibits. Many of the winning designs eventually went into mass production and were sold throughout the country.

New Materials and Technology

Without the revolutionary synthetic materials invented in the 1940s, and without the technological advances made during World War II, it is unlikely that American modern furniture would have evolved as it did. These technological advances made during the war—especially in the aircraft industry—were later applied to furniture design. The synthetic materials developed before and during the war included melamine (a crystalline compound used in making molded plastic products) and plywood laminates. All were put to good use in the new furniture.

The Classics

As postwar Americans got richer, classic American modern furniture was introduced primarily by the Herman Miller Company and Knoll Associates. The furniture was intentionally impersonal, and it was made of "honest design"—that is, plastic looked like plastic, and joints were not hidden. It was supposed to be part of American modern's charm. There were the Eames molded plywood chairs (1946) and plastic shell chairs (1949), Eames storage units (1950), wire chairs (1951), lounge chairs and ottomans (1956), and the aluminum group (1958). Eames's plywood chairs were practically indestructible and became standard in offices worldwide. Most of his designs remain classics.

"Womb" Chair

Nelson designed several innovative storage systems still being used today. Saarinen's famous "Womb" chair came out in 1948, and his "Pedestal" tables and chairs in 1955 and 1957. The sculptor Bertoia introduced his chairs of welded steel latticework in 1952. The famous Hardoy chair (also known as the "Butterfly") came out in the mid 1950s. It remains popular—and inexpensive—today.

Office, Not Home

Much of the American modern furniture of the 1950s was ultimately used in offices rather than private homes. Indeed, much of this furniture was designed with corporate settings in mind. Knoll Associates, which distributed many of the American modern designs, in fact targeted architects and designers, not the general public, as their most likely customers.