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Modern designs live again at this year's International Contemporary Furniture Fair.
By Kristi Cameron
October 2002
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Offsite:
Espasso, (718) 472-0022; A/S Stelton, www.stelton.com,
www.arne-jacobsen.com; Brayton International, (336) 434-4151, www.brayton.com;
PP Møbler, www.ppdk.com, www.danish-design.com/HJW.htm; Lost City
Arts, (212) 375-0500, www.lostcityarts.com; Loft, info@loftonline.net, www.thepolochair.com,
To buy Robin and Lucienne Day: Pioneers of Modern Design log on to
www.metropolismag.com and click on "Bookstore"; Baldinger, (718) 204-5700, www.baldinger.com;
Artek, www.artek.fi/en/index.html, www.jkl.fi/aalto/alvar/engindex.htm;
Breuer's C4 Stool and Table, Icons of Design, (215) 765-4806, www.iconsofdesign.com;
Tecta, www.tecta.de, www.marcelbreuer.org
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The International Contemporary Furniture Fair isn't the largest of the
furniture fairs--not even in this country. Still, it's overwhelming. The
sheer range of new products and companies each year make it impossible to
summarize, but read between the aisles and themes emerge. For example, many
of this year's "new" products aren't quite new: a notable number
of classic designs are being reintroduced and redistributed in the United
States. It's a trend that's larger than the fair, but it seemed to reach
critical mass on the Javits Center floor this year. The renewed popularity
of Modern designs makes reissuing them a no-brainer, but what it takes to
make them available--the technical issues, reproduction rights, and overcoming
the reasons some of them ever fell out of production in the first place--is
less obvious. We selected seven exceptional products that are once again
being offered in this country, and spoke to the people that brought them
to ICFF to find out how they made that possible.
Papa Bear Chair (1951)
HANS WEGNER
PP Møbler has been handcrafting its Danish countryman's designs
for 33 years, but it wasn't until David Gresham, design director of
Steelcase Inc., visited the manufacturer in October 2000 that U.S.
distribution was secured. Though Steelcase, a $3 billion company, wasn't
the right match for the 40-person workshop's labor-intensive
productions, its subsidiary, Brayton International--which has experience
with handcrafted furniture--was. "When this happened we were
working on some projects here and had a number of Wegner products up on
the board for inspiration," says Rob Scheper, vice president of
product design and launch for Brayton. "Many of us at Brayton have
always been interested in Wegner, so it was a nice coincidence that
David found Møbler." The Papa Bear had been out of
production, but Møbler is relaunching it to celebrate the
company's fiftieth anniversary in 2003. One hundred limited-edition
chairs will be made and signed by Wegner to be delivered next spring,
after which the Papa Bear will become a regularly offered part of the
30-product collection.
Its idiosyncratic name comes from the wood-tipped arms, which resemble paws,
and their bear-hug-like embrace. "It's one of the most comfortable
chairs you will ever sit in," Scheper says.
Tea Strainer and Hot-Water Jug with Lid (1967)
ARNE JACOBSEN
Over the years a few of the tabletop items in the Cylinda-Line--designed
by Jacobsen between 1964 and 1971--have fallen out of production. For the
2002 centennial celebration of the designer's birth, Stelton (owned by Jacobsen's
stepson, Peter Holmblad) reintroduced the tea strainer and a small hot-water
jug as part of a limited-edition gift box that includes a teapot, tea leaves,
and a book about Jacobsen. (The pieces are sold individually as well.) "Back
then you made tea from very high quality tea leaves that did not make the
tea bitter if you left them in--they just made it very strong," regional
export manager Peter Husted says. "So you had a small hot-water pot
on the side to thin out the strong tea." The increasing popularity
of the tea bag forced the company to discontinue these accessories about
20 years ago, but a resurgence of interest in quality teas has made it possible
to bring them back. Stelton has also reintroduced a jam pot and a small
jug, making 39 of the collection's original 43 pieces available. Husted
argues that the smallest of Jacobsen's designs are as important as his architecture,
because he was so concerned with details. Most famously, he designed virtually
every component--including the ashtrays, door handles, curtains, and furniture--of
the Radisson SAS Royal Hotel in Copenhagen, where the Cylinda-Line is used
in the Alberto K restaurant.
Katinsky Chair (1959)
JULIO ROBERTO KATINSKY
Carlos Junqueira started his company Espasso in May--just three days before
ICFF--to promote Brazilian design in the United States. "The concept
is not just to sell furniture but to explore that there's more to Brazilian
culture than Carnaval and soccer," he says. "People think of Brazilian
design in terms of heavy materials like those used in altars from the
1500s, 1600s, and 1700s--not modern furniture from the thirties,
forties, fifties, and up through the nineties. But this is the period of
design that Espasso is exploring." Among the pieces Junqueira is
importing is São Paulo architect Katinsky's only well-known
furniture design, the Katinsky chair. It was originally created as a
private commission; eventually, furniture manufacturer l'Atelier
produced around 150 of the chairs. In 2000 gallery owner Silvia Prado
Segall rediscovered the chair. "To see the chair jumping from paper
into the three-dimensional world again is very rewarding and
emotional," the 95-year-old architect says.
Bartolucci-Cato Coffee Table (1954)
EDGAR BARTOLUCCI AND ROBERT CATO
Jim Elkind, owner of Lost City Arts, discovered the latest item his
company is reproducing in the home of its 82-year-old designer.
"Bartolucci's daughter came in one day to tell me her parents were
moving from their wonderful sixties glass house in Tuxedo Park," he
says. "I went up there and they had great stuff--he had quite an
eye. Besides his Barwa lounge chair, he had a few of these tables. I
said, 'They're brilliant. They're worth redoing.' He said, 'Run with
it.'" Originally only 100 units of the maple-and-iron table--which
has interchangeable and reversible colored panels--were made, and most
were sold to a motel in New Jersey. The table has never before been
available to the public.
C4 Stool and Table Set (1926)
MARCEL BREUER
Four-year-old furniture distributor Icons of Design has built its brand
around strict policies regarding reproductions of classic designs. That
mandate came into play recently with one of the products it carries,
Breuer's pioneering C4 stool and table set. Tecta, which is licensed
through the Bauhaus Archiv to manufacture the design, sued another
German company, L+C Stendal, which claimed to have historical authority
because it had originally made the product for the Bauhaus Dessau. This
April a German high court ruled that Tecta has the exclusive
manufacturing rights. That's good for Icons of Design, which carries
seven Breuer designs from Tecta, and good for its American customers.
"Most people believe that they buy legal copies, but this is not
always the case," company president Ulrich Hauser says.
"People do care and want to have the licensed reproduction, but
there's often a lack of information. Tecta hasn't done much in this
country in the past ten years, and other manufacturers, of course, are
not really interested in giving accurate information about whether or
not they sell licensed reproductions."
The C4's integrity is worth safeguarding. "It marks the starting
point of the invention of tubular-steel furniture," Hauser says.
"Breuer got the idea when he rode his bicycle and looked at the
handlebar. He thought that if you can bend tubular steel to make a
handlebar, you might also be able to use it as a material to make
furniture."
Beehive (1954) and Gold Bell (1937) Pendant Lamps
ALVAR AALTO
For more than a century Baldinger Architectural Lighting Inc. has
manufactured original fixtures for projects such as the opera house in
Kuala Lumpur and Four Seasons hotels. However, it wasn't until 1986,
when Michael Graves wrote them a glowing letter about their work for his
Humana Building, in Louisville, Kentucky, that the idea of a classics
collection was born. It now includes designs by Graves, Andrée
Putman, Richard Meier, David Rockwell, and Robert Stern. A new addition
to the line, the Finlandia Collection, came about after CEO Daniel
Baldinger heard that an entire lighting collection by architect Alvar
Aalto was manufactured in Finland, by Artek, but wasn't available in
North America. Artek was reluctant to distribute the lamps in the United
States because it doesn't have UL certification capabilities and it
feared America's notorious litigiousness. Neither is a problem for
Baldinger ("We have $60 million product liability insurance, but we
don't get sued," Baldinger says), so it became the first North
American distributor of Aalto's lights. On a trip to Helsinki, Baldinger
was interested to learn that Finnish war hero General Mannerheim used to
eat lunch every day at the Savoy Hotel restaurant, which Aalto
designed."When I went there we had dinner at Mannerheim's
table," he says. "The light fixture at that table--the
Gold Bell--is now in our catalog."
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All images courtesy the companies
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Polo Chair (1973)
ROBIN DAY
"We thought the Polo chair had been slightly overlooked," says
Steve Cockram, general manager of Loft. Robin Day designed the piece as
a variation on his own 1962 Poly Side chair. Though the original is one
of the best-selling chairs of all time, the later version is an improvement:
"Even Robin Day likes the Polo chair more," Cockram says. "It's
an icon of design--30 years old next year--and people think it's brand new.
It's timeless." Available in the United States through Terminal NYC,
it can be used indoors or outdoors and sells for $108. Loft has reengineered
the chair (adding feet to the sled base for quietness) and is offering it
in 14 updated colors. The partnership with the 87-year-old designer has
been so successful that they're reissuing other variations of the Polo--including
skid and star bases and a limited-edition aluminum version--as well as three
other chairs. "He was over the moon that we took this on," Cockram
says. But there was one minor disagreement: "When we first reissued
the chair in 12 colors Robin said, 'I'm not sure about the pink.'"
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