furniture

(Photos: Vitsœ)

Good things come in Dieter Rams-designed packages, and all the better if they're the original packages commissioned in 1962. Such is the impeccable logic of Vitsœ ("vit-soo"), the furniture company best known for its Rams-designed modular shelving system. Vitsœ turns 50 this year and is celebrating five decades of good design by releasing the last 50 original side tables designed by Rams. Commissioned by Niels Vitsœ and Otto Zapf in 1962 and last produced in the 1980s, the 621 side table is a pure, unobtrusive plastic arch available in two heights and finishes (black or off-white). The 50 tables, in their original packaging, go on sale September 4 at midnight GMT (that's 8:00 p.m. Eastern) on the Vitsœ website. Priced at £195 (approximately $320) for the high version and £175 ($290) for the low, they're bound to sell out Vitsœ-n.

More than 50 years after it debuted it in the Herman Miller catalog, the Nelson Marshmallow Sofa (at right) is still as much fun as you can have with 18 cushions and a brushed steel frame. But how did this now iconic design come about? Irving Harper, whose first assignment upon joining George Nelson's office (after Nelson poached him from Raymond Loewy) was to design the Herman Miller logo, reveals all in the June issue of Metropolis. Included in Paul Makovsky and Belinda Lanks's excellent feature on the Nelson office are excerpts from interviews with members of his talented team, including Harper:

How did the Marshmallow sofa come about? One weekend, I thought about doing an upholstery unit, and wondered, Is there any way to do a sofa out of reproducible parts that could be done as if fitted out to a frame? I cooked up this model out of a checkers set, and I stuck the checkers disks on a metal frame, and it looked good to me. So I drew it up, brought it in, and that was the birth of it.

(Photos: Cecilia Lundgren)

Put a square of paper into our hands and we cannot help but immediately fold it into a "drinking cup." Our love for this origami classic, seeded by a favorite middle school art teacher who was forever running short of Dixie cups (pâpier-maché puppet head making does work up quite a thirst), drew us to Swedish designer Cecilia Lundgren's "Vika" coffee table, which debuted this spring at the satellite fair of Milan's Salone Internazionale del Mobile. "Vika," the Swedish word for fold, is formed by a rectangle that has been cut in each corner and folded just so, which sounds awfully simple until you get out the scissors and commence contorting rectangles. Lundgren's choice of white lacquered aluminum is a nod to the paper used for the earliest origami, and the table also accommodates paper in a more functional way: a space between the two table surfaces was designed to serve as a magazine rack. Stunning design and magazine storage? We'll drink to that.

Furniture designer and craftsman Sam Maloof died late last month at the age of 93. A self-taught and self-described "woodworker," Maloof handcrafted sculptural furniture that was a humane foil to minimalist architecture of the post-World War II era. Henry Dreyfuss was an early fan. In 1951, the industrial designer commissioned Maloof to furnish his home and office in Pasadena, notes Maloof's New York Times obituary.

"I was working out of a one-car garage," Mr. Maloof told The New York Times in 2001. "I didn't have power tools—nothing. He called and said, 'You don't know who I am, but I know who you are.' I just about collapsed." Mr. Maloof designed and made 25 pieces for Dreyfuss, for a grand total of $1,800.

In ensuing years, Maloof turned down lucrative offers to mass produce his furniture. He preferred to work freehand with a bandsaw and was a stickler for both craftsmanship and joinery. He made furniture that was free of nails and metal hardware. According to the Los Angeles Times, Maloof once tested the strength of the joints for a set of chairs by dropping a prototype from the roof of his garage onto his driveway. The joints survived. "There's a lot of work being done today that doesn't have any soul in it," Maloof said. "The technique may be the utmost perfection, yet it is lifeless. It doesn't have a soul. I hope my furniture has a soul to it."

(Photo: Christie's)

It's name is Rio and it dances on demand. In today's Friday Photo, we spotlight "Rio," a rocking chaise longue designed in 1978 by Oscar Niemeyer and manufactured by Tendo Brasiliera. The swooping seat of bentwood, caning, leather, and brass goes on the block Tuesday at Christie's, where it's estimated to sell for between $15,000 and $20,000. Other standout lots at the auction house's sale of 20th century decorative arts and design include architectural elements designed by Louis Sullivan (wouldn't this wrought-iron elevator enclosure, salvaged from the Chicago Stock Exchange Building, make a dynamite headboard?) and Frank Lloyd Wright (leaded glass windows, oodles of them!) as well as an extraordinary Josef Hoffmann Wiener Werkstätte mantel clock. And don't miss the highly collectible animal sculptures by François-Xavier Lalanne, or as we call them here at UnBeige HQ, "Lalannimals." Come auction time, the bronze cheetah is expected to go for about four times as much as the cooper tortoise—unless the cheetah gets cocky, allowing the tortoise to teach us all a valuable lesson.

While we didn't appreciate Morley Safer's mocking of the fashion industry, last night's 60 Minutes segment did settle one burning question: What kind of chairs does Anna Wintour prefer? In the fleeting shots of her office at Vogue HQ, we recognized the trio of steel chairs circling her desk as the cafe classic "Chaise A" designed in 1934 by Xavier Pauchard for Tolix, which still manufactures them by hand in its Burgundian factory. Longtime bistro staples, the chairs appeared on the decks of the S.S. Normandie (for our money, the most stylish ocean liner of all time) and at the Paris Exposition of 1937. Meanwhile, Design Within Reach, which sells the chairs for $250 each, spreads the rumor that "the chair was created for use in the weather forecasting room on a battleship," and notes that it "was supplied to bars and brasseries by breweries in exchange for selling their beer."

(Photos: TMRnyc)

We'll bet our overloaded powerstrips that your home, office, and/or home office is plagued by plugly furniture. Coined by designers Scott Behr and Matthew Warren to describe furniture that lacks a built-in power supply, outlets, and cable management solution, plugliness is to blame for that ever-growing tangle of dusty cords lurking beneath your desk. Enter Total Metal Resource (TMRnyc), the Brooklyn-based design firm founded by Behr and Warren. When not providing services that range from blacksmithing and welding to lighting and water-jet cutting for designers and architects, TMRnyc creates what Behr describes as "wired furniture and lighting mixed with high-edge industrial bling."

As one of 45 exhibitors at the seventh annual BKLYN DESIGNS, which kicks off tomorrow and runs through Sunday in Brooklyn's DUMBO, TMRnyc will display its wired wares in a giant cube made from laser-cut sheets of aluminum. Inside their Richard Serra-flavored booth, you'll find the new Side Wired Desk (a prototype is pictured above, at left), which is studded with eight outlets and itself plugs into the wall—with a lone cord. "The design challenge was to make a great-looking desk, incorporate a hidden cable management system and power source, as well as making it fast and easy to get at the cable ends to rearrange things as needed," Behr tells us. The sleek, wood-topped solution involves wire grommets and a hinged tray that can manage cables and otherwise minimize clutter. The target audience? "People that are obsessed with organization and neatness—or someone that just wants to take their desktop back from their computer."

(Photos: Sotheby's)

Did you know that legendary art director Alexey Brodovitch dabbled in furnture design? Behold this plywood, rope, and metal rocking chair, one of his entries in the Museum of Modern Art's 1948 International Competition for Low-Cost Furniture Design. Organized by Edgar Kaufmann, Jr., who directed MoMA's industrial design department from 1940 until its merger with the department of architecture eight years later, the competition sought furniture designed to "fit the need of modern living, production, and merchandizing." Out of more than 3,000 entries received from all over the world, Brodovitch's rocking chair took third prize ($1,250) in the seating category and went on to be exhibited alongside the work of designers such as Charles Eames. One model of this chair is in MoMA's permanent collection, and another will be auctioned by Sotheby's on Friday in New York during its 20th Century Design sale. Estimated to sell for between $8,000 and $12,000, it's no longer "low-cost," but it is just about what Brodovitch's prize money would be worth in 2009 dollars.

A few weeks stand between you and the official publication date of Gilbert Rohde: Modern Design for Modern Living (Yale University Press), Phyllis Ross's splendid new monograph (11 years in the making) about the best modern designer you've (probably) never heard of. The good news is that Ross might be coming to a museum, city, or World Art Deco Congress near you—perhaps even before your pre-ordered copy arrives.

Having already enthralled an audience at the Museum of the City of New York with tales of Rohde's achievements in adapting European design for an American lifestyle, Ross moves a few blocks downtown next Wednesday evening, when she'll discuss his legacy at the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum. Joining Ross will be contemporary designers Ayse Birsel (Birsel + Seck) and Pablo Castro (OBRA Architects) and design historian Russell Flinchum, who will moderate a panel discussion about "Gilbert Rohde and Design Now." Then it's on to Boston, Chicago, and other locales listed here. We caught up with Ross after her MCNY lecture and learned the value of a little Bauhaus-related sleuthing and why Rohde is not a household name—yet.

What drew you to Gilbert Rohde as a subject?
I first became aware of Gilbert Rohde's furniture designs at one of the Modernism shows in New York in the late 1980s. At the time I had no idea I would ever write a book about him! I was looking for some pieces to furnish my apartment. A few years later I enrolled in the Cooper-Hewitt Parsons Masters program in the history of decorative arts, having decided to change my career path away from landscape architecture. It so happens that the scrapbooks Rohde assembled to document the voluminous publicity he received during his design career had been given to Cooper-Hewitt. During my graduate studies there I interned two summers at the Henry Ford Museum which has the largest collection of his furniture. I became fascinated with his role at the Herman Miller Furniture Company, where he inaugurated modern design in 1932.

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Oodles of Ruhlmann, lots of Lalanne, and enough primo Jean-Michel Frank pieces to furnish at least two Architectural Digest-featured pieds-à-terre. Such was the dazzling array of 20th century treasures on offer yesterday in the second evening sale of Christie's three-day blockbuster auction of the Collection of Yves Saint Laurent and Pierre Bergé, which has brought in €307 million ($386 million) so far. The 20th century decorative art and design sale alone realized a record €59.1 million ($76.5 million), setting 12 world record prices for artists at auction. Among those artists? Eileen Gray, whose otherworldly "Dragons" armchair (pictured above) sold for an otherworldly €21.9 million ($28.3 million), shattering the auction record for a 20th century decorative artwork.

No word on who will be taking home the now famous fauteuil, which has a Maria Felix-meets-Vincent Price flair and reminds us of the Karl Lagerfeld-designed Chanel couture dress that Anna Wintour wore to last year's Met Costume Institute gala. Created by Gray between 1917 and 1919 and acquired by her early patron Suzanne Talbot, the leather-upholstered chair is framed in sculpted wood "lacquered brownish orange and silver and modelled as the serpentine, intertwined bodies of two dragons, their eyes in black lacquer on a white ground, their bodies decorated in low relief with stylized clouds," notes the catalogue. "The armchair distills all that was so personal and so magical in the first, intimately expressive phase of Gray's career," and work from ensuing years, when she swapped lacquer for architecture, sold well too. Gray's "Satellite" hanging lamp (circa 1925 and pictured above), once suspended from the ceiling of YSL's Rue Babylone apartment, sold for €2.9 million ($3.8 million), well exceeding its €600K-€800K estimate. Suffice it to say we were outbid on the Francois-Xavier Lalanne-designed Bar "YSL," which went for a cool €2.7 million ($3.5 million). We'll drink to that.

Previously on UnBeige:

'Buying Binge' at Paris YSL Auction; World (Probably) Not Ending

Christie's Prepares for YSL Mega-Sale