The Origins of The Success of The Mid-Century Design

From time to time you can hear someone say that Mid-Century furniture is having a ‘resurrection’. That’s not because of a cheap nostalgia moment we’re living. Pieces of furniture from the ’50s are still resurging for around two decades at this moment and it shows no signs and symptoms of decreasing.

There are handful of things about which one can make so bound a pronouncement of eternity as a George Nelson bench a Noguchi table or Charles Eames lounge. Every time something attains that level of design purity, it will still be popular rediscovered again by every new generation.

Designer Paul Frankl once said: “Style is the external expression of the inner spirit of any given time.” The truth is, that the exuberant style of the Mid-Century had much more ‘staying power’ than imagined. Its boundaries were not hard-edged, by having a virtual cut-off line at 1960.

Rather, it is actually long lasting heartily into future millennium, still characterizing modernism for our time. Its prototypical and streamlined curve wasn’t only the innovative of a single decade, but overreaching appearance vocabulary that symbolizes the greater part of a century.

The frank manufacturing and unconventional shapes of the nineteen fifties that once was considered odd in scholarly groups no longer appear to be outrageous. In light of the post-modernist whimsies and brutal deconstructionism of the 1980′s, ’50s home furniture appears sophisticated, streamlined and modern: that often inspire contemporary designers as well. The desire for this kind of home furniture is, also, reflected in the growing number of new stores and websites about mid-century furniture and by the reissue -by the Herman Miller Company after years of customers’ requestes- of the classics pieces from Charles and Ray Eames or George Nelson that represented the apex of ’50s design in America and abroad.

If you liked this article and you want to learn more about mid-century, check Mid Century Home now!