Charles & Ray Eames: 1907-1978, 1912-1988 Pioneers of Mid-Century Modernism List Price: $9.99 Sale Price: $6.26 Used From: $6.24 Average Rating:
	Design’s dynamic duo Nothing says modernist perfection like an Eames design. Though they are best known to the general public for their furniture, the husband and wife duo of Charles and Ray Eames (1907-78 and 1912-88, respectively) were also forerunners in the fields of architecture, industrial design, photography, and film...

	Charles and Ray Eames: Designers of the Twentieth Century List Price: $46.00 Sale Price: $30.00 Used From: $25.00 Average Rating:
	"Kirkham's thorough discussion of the Eameses' lesser known contributions to design and film and the personal working dynamic between the two partners provides a well-rounded perspective of one of the great design partnerships of the 20th century...

	An Eames Primer List Price: $29.95 Sale Price: $14.95 Used From: $11.09 Average Rating:
	The first book to capture the philosophy and spirit behind the work of Charles and Ray Eames, An Eames Primer offers an in-depth look at the couple's prolific legacy--one that has placed them among the most important American designers of the twentieth century...

	The Eames Lounge Chair: An Icon of Modern Design List Price: $45.00 Sale Price: $28.88 Used From: $26.00 Average Rating:
	The epitome of Modernist style and luxurious comfort, Charles and Ray Eames's leather-upholstered rosewood-veneered chair and matching ottoman, launched in 1956, is a design classic of the twentieth century...

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	The Danube is Europe's Amazon. It flows through more countries than any other river on Earth—from the Black Forest in Germany to Europe's farthest fringes, where it joins the Black Sea in Romania. Andrew Eames' journey along its length brings us face to face with the continent's bloodiest history and its most pressing issues of race and identity...

	The Furniture of Charles & Ray Eames List Price: $45.00 Sale Price: $24.73 Used From: $24.73
	In honor of the centennial of Charles Eames's birth, this beautifully designed book from the modern furniture mavens at Vitra is the ultimate publication on the iconic designs of Eames and his wife Ray...

Objects of Design: The Museum of Modern Art List Price: $39.95 Sale Price: $23.00 Used From: $2.80 Average Rating:

Showcasing selected works from The Museum of Modern Art's superlative architecture and design collection, Objects of Design features a wide variety of industrial and domestic artifacts by great designers of the modern period, from early masters such as Hector Guimard, Frank Lloyd Wright and Josef Hoffmann to contemporary practitioners including Droog Design, Ettore Sottsas, Gaetano Pesce, Hella Jongerius and others...

	The Work of Charles and Ray Eames : A Legacy of Invention List Price: $24.95 Sale Price: $53.93 Used From: $42.65 Average Rating:
	Published on the occasion of a major international traveling exhibition organized by the U.S. Library of Congress and the Vitra Design Museum in Weil am Rhein, Germany (holders of the two richest Eames collections in the world), this comprehensive volume is a testament to the Eameses' belief that good design could improve people's lives...

	Eames House: Charles and Ray Eames (Architecture in Detail) List Price: $22.95 Sale Price: $39.83 Used From: $39.83
	The "Architecture in Detail" series comprises books that focus on individual buildings noted for their exceptional character, innovative design or technical virtuosity. Each volume contains a text by a respected author, a sequence of colour and black-and-white photographs and a set of technical drawings and working details...

Modern furniture refers to furniture produced from the late 19th century through the present that is influenced by modernism. It was a tremendous departure from all furniture design that had gone before it. Dark or gilded carved wood and richly patterned fabrics gave way to the glittering simplicity and geometry of polished metal. The forms of furniture evolved from visually heavy to visually light.

 

Prior to the modernist design movement there was an emphasis on furniture as ornament, the length of time a piece took to create was often a measure of its value and desirability. During the first half of the 20th Century a new philosophy emerged shifting the emphasis to function and accessibility. Western design generally, whether architectural or design of furniture had for millennia sought to convey an idea of lineage, a connection with tradition and history.

 

The modern movement sought newness, originality, technical innovation, and ultimately the message that it conveyed spoke of the present and the future, rather than of what had gone before it. Modernist design seems to have evolved out of a combination of influences: Technically innovative materials and manufacturing methods, the new philosophies that emerged from the Werkbund and the Bauhaus School, from exotic foreign influences, from Art Nouveau and from the tremendous creativity of the artists and designers of that era.

 

The use of new materials, such as steel in its many forms; molded plywood, such as that used by Charles and Ray Eames; and of course plastics, were formative in the creation of these new designs. They would have been considered pioneering, even shocking in contrast to what came before. This interest in new and innovative materials and methods - produced a certain blending of the disciplines of technology and art. And this became a working philosophy among the members of the Deutscher Werkbund. The Werkbund was a government sponsored organization to promote German art and design around the world. Many of those involved with it including Mies van Der Rohe, Lilly Reich and others, were later involved in the Bauhaus School, and so it is not surprising perhaps that the Bauhaus School took on the mantle of this philosophy. They evolved a particular interest in using these new materials in such a way that they might be mass produced and therefor make good design more accessible to the masses.

 

African and Asian culture

An aesthetic preference for the baroque and the complex was challenged not only by new materials and the courage and creativity of a few Europeans, but also by the growing access to African and Asian design. In particular the influence of Japanese design is legend: in the last years of the 19th Century the Edo Period in Japan, Japanese isolationist policy began to soften, and trade with the west began in ernest. The artifacts that emerged were striking in their simplicity, their use of solid planes of color without ornament, and contrasting use of pattern. A tremendous fashion for all things Japanese - Japonism - swept Europe. Some say that the western Art Nouveau movement emerged from this influence directly. Designers such as Charles Rennie MacIntosh and Eileen Gray are known for both their modern and Art Deco work, and they and others like Frank Lloyd Wright are notable for a certain elegant blending of the two styles..

 

Iconic examples of modern furniture

 

Marcel Breuer's Wassily Chair

This modernist creation is perhaps one of the most iconic furniture designs of all times. The Wassily Chair, also known as the Model B3 chair, was designed by Marcel Breuer in 1925-26 while he was the head of the cabinet-making workshop at the Bauhaus, in Dessau, Germany. The design of the chair is most interesting in that it is a symmetrical abstraction of wafer thin, geometric planes that appears to be suspended in space. The magic of this is sublime design is to be primarily attributed to Breuer's ingenious use of lightweight tubular steel and minimalist leather straps.

 

Eileen Gray side table

Designed in 1927 as a bedside table for the guest room in E-1027, the home she designed for herself (and Jean Badovici) in Cap Martin, France, the asymmetry of this piece is characteristic of her "non-conformist" design style in her architectural projects and furniture. Notably, this piece also has specific utility, as it can be adjusted such that one can eat breakfast in bed on it. Gray's sister had requested such accommodation during her visits to E-1027.

 

Barcelona chair

The Barcelona chair has come to represent the Bauhaus design movement. Many consider it to be functional art, rather than just furniture. Designed by Mies Van Der Rohe and Lilly Reich in 1929 for an international design fair in Barcelona, it is said to have been inspired by both the folding chairs of the Pharaohs, and the 'X' shaped footstools of the Romans, and dedicated to the Spanish royal family.

 

Noguchi coffee table

Isamu Noguchi 1904 - 1988 was a sculptor, architect, furniture and landscape designer. Half American, half Japanese, he is famous for his organic modern forms. The Noguchi Coffee Table - has become famous for its unique and unmistakable simplicity. Refined and at the same time natural, it is one of the most sought after pieces associated with the modern classic furniture movement.

 

Chronology

Chronologically the design movement that produced modern furniture design, began earlier than one might imagine. Many of its most recognizable personalities were born at the end of the 19th or the very beginning of the 20th centuries.

• Marcel Breuer 1902–1981
• Ludwig Mies van der Rohe 1886–1969
• Eileen Gray 1878–1976
• Le Corbusier 1887–1965 (born Charles Edouard Jeanneret)
• Lilly Reich 1885–1947
• Walter Gropius 1883–1969

They were teaching and studying in Germany and elsewhere in the 1920s and 30s. At among other places the Bauhaus school of art and architecture. The furniture that was produced during this era is today known as "Modern Classic Furniture" or "Mid Century Modern".

Both the Bauhaus School and the Werkbund, had as their specific creative emphasis the blending of technology, new materials and art.

Well-known designers of the mid-century modern era include: Alvar Aalto, Al Beadle, Harry Bertoia, Chris Choate, Thomas Scott Dean, Charles and Ray Eames, Craig Ellwood, Mendel Glickman, Max Gottschalk, Ralph Haver, Edith Heath, Arne Jacobsen, A. Quincy Jones, Finn Juhl, Louis Kahn, Poul Kjaerholm, Denys Lasdun, John Lautner, Cliff May, Paul McCobb, George Nelson, Richard Neutra, Isamu Noguchi, Warren Platner, Harvey Probber, Jens Risom, Paul Rudolph, Eero Saarinen, Rudolf Schindler, Avriel Shull, Richard Schultz, Alison and Peter Smithson, Raphael Soriano, Ole Wanscher, Hans Wegner, Donald Wexler, Russel Wright, and Eva Zeisel.