The Designers of Herman edited by
Miller donald albrecht
The Designers of Herman Miller The great postwar modern furniture designs are classics, because they are still great. Herman Miller, the company that led the office revolution, is a name synonymous with the best modern residential as well as contract furniture. Classics by super-designers— Charles and Ray Eames, George Nelson, and Isamu Noguchi— can still be purchased from the Herman Miller for the Home collection. Their designs, plus the work of more than a dozen other important Herman Miller designers, are described in detail and shown in color and black & white photographs, with original drawings by Nelson and the famous Frykholm picnic posters, all from the Herman Miller archives. This book is essential for collectors, dealers, curators, designers, and other devotees of modernism.
243 illustrations, including 134 plates in color
The Designers of Herman
Miller
mit press
The Designers of Herman edited by
Miller donald albrecht
Fifth printing, 2013 First mit Press edition, © 2010 Massachusetts Institute of Technology All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any electronic or mechanical means (including photocopying, recording, or information storage and retrieval) without permission in writing from the publisher. Design by Jennifer Watercutter Set in Kabel lt and Filosofia. Printed and bound in the United States of America. Library of Congress Cataloging-inPublication Data Albrecht, Donald.
photo on title page:
Eames Lounge Chair; 1976.
The Designers of Herman Miller/ Donald Albrecht.
p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index.
isbn 0-7643-1119-3 1. Miller, Herman. 2. Furniture-United States. 3. Designers- United States. i. Title. nk1412.e18k57 2010 745.4’4922—dc20
94-24920
cip
Contents Acknowledgements 3 Introduction 7
part one: designers
of mid-century classics 13
1 : Charles and Ray Eames 15
9 : Bill Stumpf 161
Conclusion 203
10 : Tom Newhouse 165
Bibliography 209
11 : Geoff Hollington 167
Index 215
2 : George Nelson 77
12 : Bruce Burdick 173
3 : Isamu Noguchi 121
13 : Stephen Frykholm 179
part two: designers of other
14 : Other Designers 191
herman miller classics — present, and future 125
4 : Gilbert Rohde 127 5 : Alexander Girard 133 6 : Robert Propst 143 7 : Jack Kelley 149
Paul Laszio Fritz Haller Poul Kjaerholm Verner Panton Jorgen Rasmussen Peter Protzmann Ray Wilkes Tom Edwards
8 : Don Chadwick 155
v
Introduction
Leslie Pina
I used to work at home on an uncomfortable old chair, probably from a dining set, in front of a 1950s blond wood desk that did not accommodate a computer and keyboard. It is too difficult to part with the desk, but I recently brought home an Eames Soft Pad Chair with polished aluminum arms and frame, cushioned leather upholstery, a seat with adjustable height that tilts back and swivels, and a sturdy four-pronged pedestal with wheels (I also discovered an ingenious keyboard stand called a Scooter). My husband Ramon looked at the chair, sat down, stood up, sat down again and said, “This is a wonderful desk chair.” Then he looked at it again and added, “It’s also beautiful. We could use it just as well in the family room or even the living room.” (He probably forgot that the living room is never used, except occasionally as a cutthrough). Then it hit me why the chair was considered a classic and why it is included in a very distinctive catalog of the “Herman Miller for the Home” line of furnishings. The perception of designers, manufacturers, dealers, and other people who talk about furniture is that there are two disparate categories—contract and residential. Contract furniture is for the workplace and public places away from home; residential furniture, as the name denotes, is for the home. In other words, one is for places where people work, and the other is for places where people live. In the United
States (more than in Europe) there is little crossover. To keep this segregation clear, even the styles differ. For the most part, twentieth-century residential furniture has been, and still is, based on historic styles. Even as we approach the threshold of the millennium, it is no more surprising to see a room filled with uninspired wannabe eighteenth-century look-alikes than it is to see state-of-the-art electronics perched on them. Americans have an uncanny capacity for accepting visual and cultural anomalies. Modernism, the creation of new forms with a conscious effort to avoid historic style and redundant ornament, has found wider acceptance in the area of contract furniture than residential. Even in the early twentieth-century, office furniture, though basically without style, was designed to be utilitarian. The attempt at function was a carry-over from the mechanical inventions called “patent furniture” in the Victorian era, and it took precedence over style and decoration. After the Second World War, the really alert designers began to introduce inspired forms of truly functional furniture that even looked original. It was designed from the inside out, and it could be appreciated from the outside in. Plus, it could be mass produced and marketed for huge populations of people in the workplace who suddenly needed furniture to
facing page:
Eames Hang-It-All Rack; photo 1976.
vii
charles & ray eames pat kirkham
Much of the Eameses’ work stands in the best tradition of the design reform movement (which argued for making high-quality everyday objects available at reasonable prices), and also in the best tradition of modernism (which, from the 1920s on, offered a vision of harnessing new technologies, industrial production, and relevant design to the service of humankind). Charles and Ray Eames belonged to a generation of designers who, before, during, and immediately after World War II, were determined to make the world a better place in which to live but were not wedded to a narrow or solely stylistic definition of modernism. Without ever losing sight of their serious objectives, the Eameses brought to
1. Charles Eames/ Virginia Stith, 1977. 2. Frank Lloyd Wright, An Autobiography (London, 1977), p. 362.
10
their products a lightness of spirit that, to a degree, disguised their commitment and dedication. Their furniture, their films, and their exhibitions delighted the eye, the mind, and the spirit; they also worked well.
dcw
(dining chair, wood) and lcw (lounge chair, wood)
Painted molded plywood; photo 1981 by bill sharpe.
Grouping of wire chairs
in abstract pattern; photo 1951 by charles eames.
large and largely appreciative audiences. Their design work was respected by the cognoscenti and, at the same time, popular in the sense of being seen, used, enjoyed, and admired by many. In this they achieved the modernist designer’s dream of enriching the lives of ordinary people with quality objects produced by means of the most up-to-date technology.
The Eameses’ work was often innovative, although they always insisted that designers should innovate only as a last resort.1 They reveled in the particular constraints of specific briefs and in the rationalistic search for the best possible solution to the problem at hand, yet they produced work that has been described as poetic. If, as Frank Lloyd Wright said, the poetry of architecture is that which touches the heart,2 then it is not difficult to understand why Paul Schrader and others have referred to the work of the Eameses in that way.3 It was not simply their liberal use of hearts and flowers, their direct appeal to what they perceived as universal truths and the inner humanity of people the world over, or even the power of their ideas and the exquisiteness and affectivity of their compositions and imagery that made many of their products so memorable; as in a symphony, the whole was much more than the sum of the parts. In their passion to convey their enthusiasm to others, the Eameses “shaped not only things but the way people think about things.”4 Their films, exhibitions, and multiscreen presentations show them to have been at the forefront of new thinking about the most effective and pleasurable ways of communicating knowledge to large numbers of people. Their exhibitions and multiple-image shows, in particular, reached
Chairs from the Eames Aluminum Group; photo 1974 by earl woods.
The multifarious influences on the Eameses’ work, including ideas drawn from the Arts and Crafts movement, from Frank Lloyd Wright, from European modernism, from Japanese architecture and design, from “primitivism,” from contemporary fine art, from the “Romantic” interior, from Californian modernism,
3. Paul Schrader, “Poetry of ideas,” Film Quarterly, spring 1970, p. 10. See also Blueprints for Modern Living, p. 52. 4. Walter McQuade, “Charles Eames isn’t resting on his chair,” Fortune, February 1975, p. 98.
11
facing page:
Molded plywood
furniture grouping; photo 1946
by charles eames.
and from a belief in the pleasures of work, have been traced. No matter what the sources, the end result was invariably distinctive and informed by a concern with structure; for the Eameses, designing a chair, an exhibition, a film, or the front page of a newspaper was as much about structure as was designing a building. Despite this, there was not a single aesthetic formula that related to every
5. Esther McCoy, “Charles and Ray Eames,” Design Quarterly 98/99 (1974– 75), p. 29. There is also a direct link between the design process of looking at a problem from the scale above and the scale below (a process Charles Eames learned from Eliel Saarinen) and the film Powers of Ten.
12
area of their work; the architecture, for instance, favored the geometric forms of International Style modernism, whereas a great deal of the furniture was more plastic in form. Their buildings and many of their furniture pieces were minimalist, yet their films, multi-screen presentations, exhibitions, toys, and decorative arrangements of objects drew on addition, juxtaposition, fragmentation, cross-cultural and extra-cultural reference, repetition, and excess. However, as Esther McCoy has pointed out, the interaction between the minimalist frames of the Eameses’ buildings and their “varied and rich” contents was similar to that between the structure and the content of their films and exhibitions.5
Variations of molded plywood chairs and tables; photo 1946 by charles eames.
Eames products were part of a shift in postwar American taste toward favoring organic over geometric forms, and they found success at a time when modernist design was broadening from a movement with aspirations toward the monolithic to a pluralism in which alternative aesthetics coexisted more or less happily. The Eameses eschewed exclusive insistence on a machine aesthetic, which they used only when and where it suited them. The Cranbrook experience was crucial to their joint work; it validated the eclecticism inherent in Charles’s earlier designs while extending his knowledge and understanding of International Style architecture and design, and it tempered Ray’s more purist modernism.
Herman Miller Furniture Company showroom, Los Angeles, 1959.
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In Eero Saarinen and in Ray, Charles Eames found empathetic and immensely talented collaborators. The furniture he designed with Saarinen certainly proved seminal to the later work of the Eames Office, but it was with Ray that Charles produced some of the most visually interesting and technologically adventurous furniture of the mid twentieth century. For every designer who was influenced by the Eameses in terms of style, there were others who drew strength from their commitments to design as a problem-solving exercise, to quality at every level, and to engagement with a wide range of activities, issues, and commercial contexts. They became well known as designers and communicators in the United States, in Western Europe, in Japan, and in India. After World War II Japan paid great attention to American design, and from the early 1950s on the Eameses’ work was publicized there by Torao “Tiger” Saito of Japan Today.6 In India they became near-celebrities after the release of the Eames Report, which considered the question of design in modern India in relation to small industries and the “rapid deterioration in the design and quality of consumer goods.” 7 Insofar as this report led to the establishment of the National Institute of Design, the Eameses had a direct impact on design education in India.8 Their indirect influence was felt in many other Split upholstery Armshells with contract and four-leg bases; photo 1976.
15
George Nelson michael webb
Nelson Shelving Unit, 1958.
George Nelson’s long, productive life (1908–86) encompassed the birth, heyday, and decline of American Modernism. He made a major contribution to that movement as a writer, advocate, social critic, impresario, and architect. He was “an original thinker,” observes design critic Ralph Caplan, “with a gift for communicating ideas and finding good people. His office had a consistency of thoughtfulness, even when it was whimsical or humorous,” Nelson’s associate, designer Bruce Burdick, agrees: “George was a unique person who will be remembered for his thoughts and writings about design. His words were more important than the projects.”
1. George Nelson, conversation with D.J. D.J. DePree (Zeeland, Mich.: Herman Miller Archives, 1982).
As design director for Herman Miller from 1945 through the mid-1960s and later as an outspoken consultant. Nelson found what he called “a glorified cabinet shop” and helped make it an industry leader, a powerhouse of modern residential and contract design. He was passionately involved with this family firm over four decades, sharing the spotlight there with Charles and Ray Eames, Alexander Girard, and, briefly, Isamu Noguchi. He brought these designers to them because he wanted nothing but the best and, as he explained, “I can’t have all the ideas.” “It scared the daylights out of me to pull Charlie into that act because I knew that, if I lived forever, I never could turn out stuff like those chairs he did,” Nelson confessed. I realized it was absurd for me to be director of design because no one was going to direct Charlie.”1 Nelson and Charles Eames were almost exact contemporaries and were often as close as siblings, sharing a passion for excellence and a loathing for compromise and expe diency. Communicating ideas was another bond, and they collaborated seamlessly (with the enthusiastic participation of Alexander Girard) on a multimedia educational experiment. First presented at the University of Georgia in 1953 and reprised at ucla
the following year, “A Rough Sketch of a Sample Lesson for a Hypothetical Course” was a one-hour sensory extravaganza that has become the stuff of legend. Students were electrified: one exclaimed to Nelson, “All teaching should be like this.” Although Nelson consistently supported the Eameses, he sometimes resented the fact that they won more respect than he. It’s easy to see why this happened. The Eames Office designed chairs and tables that resolved basic issues and never went out of style. They solved problems on an abstract level and took as long as they needed to get things right. The Nelson office was under pressure to respond to
Nelson Swag Leg Desk, 1958.
Nelson Swag Leg Arm Chairs with Dining Table, 1958.
19
immediate needs, and their problem solving often focused on instruments of daily life that have changed over the years, such as typewriters, record changers, and Dictaphones. These are now historic artifacts, and the desks and cabinets designed for them are material for a time capsule. Every design aficionado is familiar with the Nelson classics: the platform bench, Marshmallow love seat, Coconut chair. Sling sofa, ball clock and bubble lamps. However, Nelson was personally responsible for only the first of these and an early prototype of the last. As head of his own design office he handpicked brilliant talents and gave them the freedom to
Herman Miller Collection, Chicago Showroom; NeoCon 2012.
20
develop his ideas in their own way and to work independently on the design of furniture, graphics, clocks, lamps, exhibitions, interiors, an experimental house, and much else. That freed him to meet with clients, deliver lectures, organize a new approach to art education, conceptualize an exhibition, plan another Aspen design conference, or do what he loved best—write.
Platform Bench, 1946.
End Table With Lamp; 1950.
Nelson Desk, 1948.
Molded Plywood Tray Table; 1949.
21
Bibliography general books Blake, Peter. No Place Like Utopia: Modern Architecture and the Company We Kept. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1993. Dormer, Peter. Design Since 7945. London: Thames and Hudson, 1993. Eidelberg, Martin, ed. Design 1935–1965. What Modern Was? New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1991. Emery, Marc. Furniture by Architects. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1983; expanded edition 1988. Fehrman, Cherie and Kenneth Fehrman. Postwar Interior Design 1945–1960. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1987. Fiell, Charlotte & Peter. Modern Furniture Classics Since 1945. Washington d.c.: aia Press, 1991.
———. Modern Chairs. Kolln, Germany: Taschen, 1993.
Horn, Richard. Fifties Style. New York: Friedman/Fairfax, 1993.
Pulos, Arthur J. The American Design Adventure 1940–1975. Cambridge: mit Press, 1988.
Gandy, Charles D. and Susan ZimmermannStedham. Contemporary Classics: Furniture of the Masters. New York: Whitney Library of Design, 1990 (originally McGraw-Hill,
Jackson, Lesley. The New Look: Design in the Fifties. New York: Thames Hudson, 1991.
Sembach, Klaus-Jorgen, et at. TwentiethCentury Furniture Design. Kbln, Germany: Taschen, n.d.
1981). Garner, Philippe. Twentieth-Century Furniture. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1980. Greenberg, Cara. Mid-Century Modern: Furniture of the 1950s. New York: Harmony, 1984; reprinted 1995. Hiesinger, Kathryn B. & George H. Marcus. Landmarks of Twentieth-Century Design: An Illustrated Handbook. New York: Abbeville, 1993.
———. Contemporary Architecture and Interiors of the 1950s. London: Phaeton, 1994. Knobble, Lance. Office Furniture: TwentiethCentury Design. New York: E. P. Dutton, 1987. Mang, Karl. History of Modern Furniture. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1978. Meadmore, Clement. The Modern Chair: Classics in Production. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1975.
Sparke, Penny. Furniture: Twentieth-Century Design. New York: E. P. Dutton, 1986. Simpson, Miriam. Modem Furniture Classics. New York: Whitney Library of Design, 1987.
von Vegesack, Alexander et. at. 100 Masterpieces from the Vitra Design Museum Collection. Weil am Rhein, Germany: Vitra Design Museum, 1996.
Pifia, Leslie. Fifties Furniture. Atglen, Pennsylvania: Schiffer, 1996.
facing page:
Eames House Living Room; photo 1976.
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books by or about herman miller and its designers: Abercrombie, Stanley. George Nelson: the Design of Modern Design. Cambridge: mit Press, 1995. Aidersey-Williams, Hugh and Geoff Hollington, Hollington Industrial Design. London: Architecture Design and Technology Press, 1990. Caplan, Ralph. The Design of Herman Miller. New York: Whitney Library of Design, 1976.
———. Connections: The Work of Charles and Ray Eames. exhibition catalog. Los Angeles: Frederick S. Wight Art Gallery, 1976. Cruikshank, Jeffrey L. and Clark Malcolm. Herman Miller Inc.: Buildings and Beliefs. Washington d.c.: a.i.a. Press, 1994. De Pree, Hugh. Business as Unusual. Zeeland, Michigan: Herman Miller, 1986.
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Herman Miller Furniture Co. The Herman Miller Collection. catalogs. Zeeland, Michigan: Herman Miller Furniture Co., 1948, 1950, 1952 (also reprinted New York: Acanthus Press, 1995), 1955/56 (also reprinted at glen, Pennsylvania: Schaffer Publishing, 1998). Herman Miller, Inc. Action Office System. Zeeland, Michigan: Herman Miller, Inc., 1984.
———. Reference Points. Zeeland, Michigan, Herman Miller, 1984. ———. Burdick Group Pages. product brochure. Zeeland, Michigan, Herman Miller, 1992. ———. Herman Miller for the Home. product catalog. Zeeland, Michigan: Herman Miller, 1995.
———. Herman Miller Pricebooks: Seating & Furniture. Zeeland, Michigan: Herman Miller, 1995. ———. Herman Miller Catalog. Zeeland, Michigan: Herman Miller, 1996. ———. Marigold Lodge. Zeeland, Michigan, Herman Miller, n.d.
———. Problems of Design. New York: Whitney, 1957. ———. George Nelson on Design. New York: Whitney Library of Design, 1979. ———. Changing the World. University of Michigan, 1987.
Hunter, Sam. Isamu Noguchi. New York: Abbeville, 1978.
Neuhart, John, Marilyn Neuhart, Et Ray Eames. Eames Design. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1991.
Kirkham, Pat. Charles and Ray Eames: Designers of the Twentieth Century. Cambridge: mit, 1995.
Propst, Robert. The Office: A Facility Based on Change. Zeeland, Michigan: Herman Miller, Inc., 1968.
Nelson, George. Chairs. New York: Whitney, 1953; reprinted New York: Acanthus,1994.
———. Action Office: The System that Works for You. Ann Arbor, Michigan: Herman Miller Research Corp., 1978.
———. Display. New York: Whitney, 1953. ———. Storage. New York: Whitney, 1954.
articles Propst, Robert, et. al. The Senator Hatfield Office Innovation Project. Ann Arbor, Michigan: Herman Miller Research Corp., 1977.
———Renwick Gallery. A Modem Consciousness: D. J. De Pree, Florence Knoll. exhibit catalog. Washington d.c.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1975. ———University of Illinois. William Stumpf, Industrial Design. exhibition brochure. Urbana-Champaign: University of Illinois, 1995.
“A Conversation with George Nelson.” Industrial Design (April 1969): 76–77. Berman, Ann. “Herman Miller Influential Designs of the 1940s and 1950s.” Architectural Digest (September 1991): 34–40. Branson, Michael. “Isamu Noguchi, the Sculptor, Dies at 84.” The New York Times (December 31, 1988): obituary. Caplan, Ralph. “Caplan on Nelson.” ID. (January February 1992): 76–83.
“Designers in America: Part 3.” Industrial Design (Oct. 1972): 30–31. “Furniture Best of Category: Aeron Chair.” ID. Annual Design Review 1995 (July/August 1995).
Gingerich, Owen. “A Conversation with Charles Eames.” The American Scholar (Summer 1977): 326–337.
“Design, Technology, and the Pursuit of Ugliness.” Saturday Review. (October 2, 1971): 22–25.
“Herman Miller for the Home.” Interior Design (December 1993).
Ostergard, Derek and David Hanks. “Gilbert Rohde and the Evolution of Modern Design 1927–1941.” Arts Magazine (October 1981).
McQuade, Walter. “Charles Eames Isn’t Resting on His Chair.” Fortune (February 1975): 96–100, 144–145. Nelson, George. “The Furniture Industry. Fortune 35 (January 1947): 106–111.
“Business and the Industrial Designer.” Fortune (July 1949): 92–98. “Modern Furniture.” Interiors (July 1949): 77–89.
———. “Gilbert Rohde: The Herman Miller Years.” 7-page typescript in Herman Miller Archives, n.d. Pearlman, Chee. “Machine for Sitting.” ID. (September/October 1994).
“Royal Gold Medal for Architecture 1979: The Office of Charles and Ray Eames.” 12-page packet, April 1979. Schwartz, Bonnie. “2 Chairs, 2 Processes.” Metropolis (May 1996).
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Donald Albrecht is an independent curator and curator of architecture and design at the Museum of the City of New York. He has organized exhibitions for the Library of Congress; Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum; National Building Museum; and the Getty Center. Albrecht has written numerous articles for publications such as Architectural Digest, House and Garden, and The New York Times. Among his books are Designing Dreams: Modern Architecture in the Movies and The Work of Charles and Ray Eames: A Legacy of Invention. The mit Press Massachusetts Institute of Technology Cambridge, Massachusetts London, England
ISBN 0-7643-1119-3
any appropriate captions (for any images on cover or flap) Book and cover design by Jennifer Watercutter