Mid-century modern is a term that describes mid–20th century developments in interior, product, and graphic design, architecture, and urban development from roughly 1933 to 1965. The term, employed as a style descriptor as early as the mid-1950s, was reaffirmed in 1983 by Cara Greenberg in the title of her book, Mid-Century Modern: Furniture of the 1950s (Random House), celebrating the style that is now recognized by scholars and museums worldwide as a significant design movement.
Architecture
Detail of Copan, a Niemeyer building in Sao Paulo, Oscar Niemeyer
The Mid-Century modern movement in the U.S. was an American reflection of the International and Bauhaus movements, including the works of Gropius, Florence Knoll, Le Corbusier and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. Though the American component was slightly more organic in form and less formal than the International Style, it is more firmly related to it than any other. Brazilian and Scandinavian architects were very influential at this time, with a style characterized by clean simplicity and integration with nature. Like many of Wright's designs, Mid-Century architecture was frequently employed in residential structures with the goal of bringing modernism into America's post-war suburbs. This style emphasized creating structures with ample windows and open floor plans, with the intention of opening up interior spaces and bringing the outdoors in. Many Mid-century houses utilized then-groundbreaking post and beam architectural design that eliminated bulky support walls in favor of walls seemingly made of glass. Function was as important as form in Mid-Century designs, with an emphasis placed specifically on targeting the needs of the average American family.
In Europe the influence of Le Corbusier and the CIAM resulted in an architectural orthodoxy manifest across most parts of post-war Europe that was ultimately challenged by the radical agendas of the architectural wings of the avant-garde Situationist International, COBRA, as well as Archigram in London. A critical but sympathetic reappraisal of the internationalist oeuvre, inspired by Scandinavian Moderns such as Alvar Aalto, Sigurd Lewerentz and Arne Jacobsen, and the late work of Le Corbusier himself, was reinterpreted by groups such as Team X, including structuralist architects such as Aldo van Eyck, Ralph Erskine, Denys Lasdun, Jorn Utzon and the movement known in the United Kingdom as New Brutalism.
Pioneering builder and real estate developer Joseph Eichler was instrumental in bringing Mid-Century Modern architecture ("Eichler Homes") to subdivisions in the Los Angeles area and the San Francisco Bay region of California, and select housing developments on the east coast. George Fred Keck, his brother Willam Keck, Henry P. Glass, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, and Edward Humrich created Mid-Century Modern residences in the Chicago area. Mies van der Rohe's Farnsworth House is extremely difficult to heat or cool, while Keck and Keck were pioneers in the incorporation of passive solar features in their houses to compensate for their large glass windows.
Industrial design
Scandinavian design was very influential at this time, with a style characterized by simplicity, democratic design and natural shapes. Glassware (Iittala – Finland), ceramics (Arabia – Finland), tableware (Georg Jensen – Denmark), lighting (Poul Henningsen – Denmark), and furniture (Danish modern) were some of the genres for the products created. In America, east of the Mississippi, the American-born Russell Wright, designing for Steubenville Pottery, and Hungarian-born Eva Zeisel designing for Red Wing Pottery and later Hall China created free-flowing ceramic designs that were much admired and heralded in the trend of smooth, flowing contours in dinnerware. On the West Coast of America the industrial designer and potter Edith Heath (1911–2005) founded Heath Ceramics in 1948. The company was one of the originally numerous California pottery manufacturers that had their heyday in post-war USA, and produced Mid-Century modern ceramic dish-ware. Edith Heath's "Coupe" line remains in demand and has been in constant production since 1948, with only periodic changes to the texture and color of the glazes.
Graphic design
Printed ephemera documenting the mid-century transformations in urban development, architecture and design include Linen Type postcards from the 1930s to the early 1950s. They consisted primarily of national view-cards of North American cities, towns, buildings, monuments and civil and military infrastructures. Mid-century Linen Type postcards came about through innovations pioneered through the use of offset lithography. The cards were produced on paper with a high rag content, which gave the postcard a fabric type look and feel. At the time this was a less expensive process. Along with advances in printing technique, Linen Type cards allowed for very vibrant ink colors. The encyclopedic geographic iconography of mid-century Linen Type images suggests popular middle class attitudes about nature, wilderness, technology, mobility and the city during the mid-20th century.
Curt Teich in Chicago was the most prominent and largest printer and publisher of Linen Type postcards pioneering lithography with his "Art Colortone" process. Other large publishers include Stanley Piltz in San Francisco, who established the "Pictorial Wonderland Art Tone Series", Western Publishing and Novelty Company in Los Angeles and the Tichnor Brothers in Boston. The printing of mid-century Linen Type postcards began to give way in the late 1950s to Kodachrome and Ektachrome type glossy color prints.
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Hollywood Regency, sometimes called Regency Moderne, is a design style that describes both interior design and landscape architecture characterized by the bold use of color and contrast often with metallic and glass accents meant to signify both opulence and comfort. It is named for the movie-making industry of southern California as typified by the glamorous homes and estates of the actors and actresses of Hollywood's "Golden Era", roughly from the 1920s through the 1950s, and typified by the work of designers such as Dorothy Draper and Billy Haines. The term "Hollywood Regency" appears to have originated with Draper in the 1920s. It remains a current and lively area of design work both inside and outside of southern California.
Characteristics
Hollywood Regency is glitz and glamour covered in lacquer, chrome, and mirrored finishes. Every detail is meant to convey luxury and there is always the feeling that people should look good in the design— particularly if they are wearing satin bathrobes and sipping a cocktail.
— Rochelle Greayer
It is a style meant to feel frivolously overdone and pleasantly, extravagantly unbalanced, yet sleek and modern, not unlike the Rococo style and in contrast to the strict, repetitive ornament of styles such as Baroque. Blocks of contrasting color, especially pink, turquoise (from dark near-blue to bright pale seafoam), yellow, and black-and-white checkerboard are highly favored, sometimes in orderly but asymmetric repetition or in different textures of soft furnishings in the same high-ceilinged, large-windowed room.
Whole mirrors (not mosaics) cover the surfaces of furniture such as dressers and side tables, and are used to cover entire walls and sometimes ceilings. Animal prints (zebra, cheetah, snakeskin, etc.) as well as complex floral designs in both black-and-white and shades of single colors are used as rugs, tablecloths, and seat cushions. Imitation bamboo stalks are used as trim in shower doors, vanities, table legs, and other household furniture. The divan, with its plush sides and asymmetric shape, is a staple furniture item. Oversized black-and-white wall prints of famous actresses are common. The criss-cross and zig-zag are universal, whether symmetrical or not. Sunburst mirrors are almost ubiquitous.