Designs for Living

Unlike the imperious, scene-stealing forms of many designers, a Risom chair is a silent partner in an interior, an object for human use that its meaningless until it participates in a pattern of day-to-day living. In this modesty of attitude Risom of course has never been alone. Hans Wegner says, “A chair is not complete until someone sits in it.” Paul McCobb – the designer most familiar to young marrieds of the late Forties and early Fifties because of the dining groups and casual chairs which were then sold with phenomenal success under his name in department stores (a new promotional gimmick for such emporiums) – was chiefly responsible for turning the light modern idiom into a way of life for the poplar market.

T.H. Robsjohn-Gibbings, the British-born designer who has worked in New York for many years, has also dedicated his superbly tailored, generously proportioned furniture to comfortable living, Wormley himself has put it, “News-gatherers, significance-prognosticators, and above all, sales people, need a shot in the arm. Whether the consumer needs it on schedule is more difficult to demonstrate.” The pressure of having to conceive a whole new spirit and embody it in an entire collection embracing sofas, lounge chairs, dining furniture, an assortment of occasional tables, cabinetry, and sometimes even beds, would have done in a lesser man long ago. But Wormley’s nightmare is the decorator’s dream; and every January during the furniture show in Chicago, one of the gala events, attended by popping champagne corks and wandering musicians, is the unveiling of Wormley’s new line.

There are those – and some avant-garde designers among them – who believe Wormley’s understated, sympathetic furniture will enjoy favor long after more dramatic, more scintillating modern designs have passed into the stage of old- fashioned curiosities – which seems a certain fate for many of them. Planned as a revolution in form to match a revolution in technology, furniture design of the Bauhaus persuasion can expect a survival span no longer than that of a given state of technology, and today’s designer is realist enough to know that the technology within which he works is certain sooner or later to be replaced by a new set of industrial verities. Against that day, Eames throws his greatest sincerity into “useless projects,” Nelson bemuses himself with marshmallows and coconuts, and Saarinen explores the farthest shores of harmony.

Originally appeared in Playboy magazine, July 1961.

< Previous | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6