Decorative Arts and Design Archives - Mid Mod Scout https://midmodscout.com/product-category/283155-books/1000-subjects/1-arts-and-photography/336832011-decorative-arts-and-design/ Mid Century Modern Furniture & Decor Mon, 03 Nov 2025 04:42:33 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.9.4 https://midmodscout.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/cropped-mid-mod-scout-favicon-32x32.png Decorative Arts and Design Archives - Mid Mod Scout https://midmodscout.com/product-category/283155-books/1000-subjects/1-arts-and-photography/336832011-decorative-arts-and-design/ 32 32 Hollywood Bachelor Pads https://midmodscout.com/product/hollywood-bachelor-pads/ Tue, 27 Jun 2017 21:47:41 +0000 http://midmodscout.com/product/hollywood-bachelor-pads/ Continued]]> From living rooms with stripper poles to showers with commanding views of the city, Los Angeles’s wealthy bachelor rock stars, actors, producers, and financiers have established a slightly different and eclectically exciting bar for the designers who serve 26 of them. For instance, the bedroom can be a very, um, significant feature. Rock star Dave Navarro has been quoted as saying he “wanted clothes to literally fall off a girl” when she came into the room. 300 vivid color photographs reveal an insider’s view of these killer bachelor pads.

  • Used Book in Good Condition
]]> Atomic Ranch Midcentury Interiors https://midmodscout.com/product/atomic-ranch-midcentury-interiors/ Wed, 28 Jun 2017 01:46:53 +0000 http://midmodscout.com/product/atomic-ranch-midcentury-interiors/ Continued]]>

Atomic Ranch Midcentury Interiors showcases the virtues of the preferred and ubiquitous ranch houses that sprang up around the country following World War II. It features the exceptional interiors of eight houses, discusses successes and challenges, and shows live stylishly. Tips are shared on color, flooring, window coverings, furniture arrangements, and how off-the-shelf components can also be turned into custom features. The homeowners’ stories give an explanation for why these rooms work, and provides you with resources and ideas for the whole thing from garage doors to the art at the wall.

Writer Michelle Gringeri-Brown and photographer Jim Brown publish the quarterly magazine Atomic Ranch, which features ranch homes built all across The us. They’re the authors of Atomic Ranch: Design Ideas for Stylish Ranch Homes and live in Portland, Oregon, in a 1952 brick ranch.

]]> Danish Modern and Beyond: Scandinavian Inspired https://midmodscout.com/product/danish-modern-and-beyond-scandinavian-inspired/ Tue, 27 Jun 2017 21:42:42 +0000 http://midmodscout.com/product/danish-modern-and-beyond-scandinavian-inspired/ Continued]]> The sleek lines of Danish Modern furniture took the design world by storm in the mid-twentieth century. Among the American companies that manufactured this style of furniture was the Heywood-Wakefield Co., based in Gardner, Massachusetts. Known widely today for their lines of blonde furniture, Heywood-Wakefield addressed the American familys desire for an informal yet sophisticated look through its Danish Modern and related lines produced in the 1950s and 1960s. Here are original Heywood-Wakefield catalog images of Danish inspired living room, dining room, and bedroom furniture, featuring original catalog descriptions, model numbers, and measurements for all pieces. A price guide showing current market values is included. Collectors, designers, and aficionados of vintage furniture will welcome this timeless presentation.

  • Used Book in Good Condition
]]> Eames: Beautiful Details https://midmodscout.com/product/eames-beautiful-details/ Wed, 28 Jun 2017 01:38:11 +0000 http://midmodscout.com/product/eames-beautiful-details/ Continued]]> “Eames: Beautiful Details” celebrates the seamlessness and fluidity in which Charles and Ray Eames operated as both a husband and wife team and as designers unrestricted by traditionally professional boundaries. Select details of their life and work, from their refined designs to their innovative experiments, and even including images depicting the on a regular basis poetic moments of their lives, and are shared here in this exhibit within a book.

Inspired by Charles’s immersive and original slideshows, in which he expertly selected and grouped images together that communicated information in an aesthetic, direct, and accessible way, this book strives to visually create the Eameses’ life and work by taking the viewer through a delightful journey, specializing in their “”beautiful details.””

The packaging design of the “Eames: Beautiful Details” slipcase is a pattern inspired by the triangles and colors of one of their most inventive, if lesser known, designs for children, simply called, “”the toy.”” It also pays homage to the patterns they used on their well loved House of Cards. The Eameses brought a sense of humor and joy to everything they created, and the design and layout of the book aims to convey that spirit in a visual feast for the eyes.

It is a testament to the Eameses and the lasting value of good design that their Eames lounge chair, created in 1956, endures today as perhaps the most recognizable and coveted piece of mid century furniture design. Their experiments in technological innovations, like molded plywood and fiberglass, resulted in such classic pieces as the bent plywood LCW and DCM Chairs, the Molded Plastic Chairs, and the Aluminum Group; all of which are still in production by Herman Miller.

Likewise, Charles and Ray designed and built their own home in 1949 in Pacific Palisades, and it is still revered as a landmark of modern architecture. Built as a part of the Case Study program in California, sponsored by Arts & Architecture magazine, it used to be probably the most earliest experiments in pre fab construction, the usage of off the shelf industrial parts. But unlike the austerity of much of modern architectural design, their factory like shell used to be lovingly lived in at the side of their personal collections of folk art, treasures from their travels, and on a regular basis objects refreshingly displayed with affection and without pretense.

In exhibition design as well, “”Mathematica: A World of Numbers … and Beyond, 1961,”” for IBM is regarded as groundbreaking as an interactive, educational, and experiential way to communicate the wonder and magic of math. In a similar fashion, their seminal film, Powers of Ten, 1977, expresses the mathematical concept of multiplying to the tenth power, in a very direct, simple, and powerful way.
Unlike any other book in the past published on Charles and Ray Eames, this unique monograph is a visual celebration of their work and life, and used to be created in true collaboration with Charles’s grandson, Eames Demetrios, and other members of the Eames family.

  • Eames Beautiful Details
]]> Mid-Century Modern Complete https://midmodscout.com/product/mid-century-modern-complete/ Tue, 27 Jun 2017 21:37:41 +0000 http://midmodscout.com/product/mid-century-modern-complete/ Continued]]>
This volume is the single best source for anyone interested in exploring and experiencing Mid-Century Modern, the international design movement that still influences homes and lifestyles from Palm Springs to Long Island and from Japan to Scandinavia. It is divided into three main sections: “Media and Masters” profiles key creators, including Charles and Ray Eames, George Nakashima, Jean Prouvé, and Eero Saarinen; “Houses and Interiors” presents 20 seminal and complete Mid-Century Modern homes and their furnishings, including buildings by Philip Johnson, Mies van der Rohe, Alvar Aalto, and Marcel Breuer; and an alphabetical dictionary of people, terms, and places is a comprehensive reference to the movement. The informed and accessible texts are illustrated with more than 1,000 images that bring together classics and rarities, mass-produced items and unusual objets d’art.
]]> California Design, 1930–1965: “Living in a Modern https://midmodscout.com/product/california-design-1930-1965-living-in-a-modern/ Tue, 27 Jun 2017 21:37:07 +0000 http://midmodscout.com/product/california-design-1930-1965-living-in-a-modern/ Continued]]>

The first comprehensive examination of California’s mid-century modern design, generously illustrated.

In 1951, designer Greta Magnusson Grossman observed that California design was “not a superimposed style, but an answer to present conditions…. It has developed out of our own preferences for living in a modern way.” California design influenced the material culture of the entire country, in everything from architecture to fashion. This generously illustrated book, which accompanies a major exhibition at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, is the first comprehensive examination of California’s mid-century modern design. It begins by tracing the origins of a distinctively California modernism in the 1930s by such European émigrés as Richard Neutra, Rudolph Schindler, and Kem Weber; it finds other specific design influences and innovations in solid-color commercial ceramics, inspirations from Mexico and Asia, new schools for design training, new concepts about leisure, and the conversion of wartime technologies to peacetime use (exemplified by Charles and Ray Eames’s plywood and fiberglass furniture).

The heart of California Design is the modern California home, famously characterized by open plans conducive to outdoor living. The layouts of modernist homes by Pierre Koenig, Craig Ellwood, and Raphael Soriano, for example, were intended to blur the distinction between indoors and out. Homes were furnished with products from Heath Ceramics, Van Keppel-Green, and Architectural Pottery as well as other, previously unheralded companies and designers. Many objects were designed to be multifunctional: pool and patio furniture that was equally suitable indoors, lighting that was both task and ambient, bookshelves that served as room dividers, and bathing suits that would turn into ensembles appropriate for indoor entertainment.

California Design includes 350 images, most in color, of furniture, ceramics, metalwork, architecture, graphic and industrial design, film, textiles, and fashion, and ten incisive essays that trace the rise of the California design aesthetic.

]]> Palm Springs Modern: Houses in the California https://midmodscout.com/product/palm-springs-modern-houses-in-the-california/ Tue, 27 Jun 2017 21:36:35 +0000 http://midmodscout.com/product/palm-springs-modern-houses-in-the-california/ Continued]]> This classic volume, now available at a lower price, showcases jet-set homes designed by the likes of Neutra, Frey, Lautner, and others. Palm Springs is famous as a mecca for the international jet set. But the city has also attracted its share of eccentrics and mavericks who have left an architectural legacy that remains unsurpassed for its originality and international influence. This book examines the impact that architects and designers have had on the desert oasis, primarily from the 1940s to the 1960s. Palm Springs Modern features examples of midcentury modernism at its most glamorous, some of them the residences of prominent figures who commissioned weekend getaways in the desert, including Frank Sinatra, Walter Annenberg, and Raymond Loewy. Adéle Cygelman’s insightful text, a foreword by architectural historian Joseph Rosa, contemporary color photography by David Glomb, and the celebrated archival black-and-white work of Julius Shulman all capture the distinctly modern allure of America’s famed desert playground.

]]> Unseen Midcentury Desert Modern https://midmodscout.com/product/unseen-midcentury-desert-modern/ Wed, 28 Jun 2017 01:34:55 +0000 http://midmodscout.com/product/unseen-midcentury-desert-modern/ Continued]]>

In 2008, Daniel Chavkin began photographing one of the crucial more discreet and off-the-beaten-path midcentury modern homes and buildings in the Palm Springs area. These included secret gems created by such famous modernist architects as William Cody and John Porter Clark, in addition to others by quite lesser-known designers. The result is this rich photographic collection of in large part unseen examples of desert modern architecture. Some of the buildings shown herein aren’t easily accessible by, or in some cases completely off-limits to, most of the people, so the photographs in this book may be the only opportunity for midcentury aficionados to ever see a few of these buildings.

Daniel Chavkin is a photographer who lives and works in Palm Springs and Los Angeles. He began his career shooting celebrity portraits, but his passion is for midcentury modern architecture―and especially the desert modernism of Palm Springs. His love of modernism used to be forged at the same time as studying at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California. He also owns the graphic design business Design Lab 2.

  • Gibbs Smith
]]> Mid-Century Modern: Interiors, Furniture, Design https://midmodscout.com/product/mid-century-modern-interiors-furniture-design/ Tue, 27 Jun 2017 21:33:17 +0000 http://midmodscout.com/product/mid-century-modern-interiors-furniture-design/ Continued]]>

The 1950’s house was a scientific triumph, designed in a laboratory and tested on inhabitants of all ages before being built for the masses. Never had homes been so thoroughly contemporary, with antiques and period styles entirely banished. Mid-Century Modern explores the interior decor of this seminal decade, concentrating on all aspects of a home’s decoration—walls, flooring, surfaces, lighting, and, of course, furniture. Case studies examine beautiful present-day homes that exhibit mid-century style in an exemplary way, and suggest ideas for taking the 1950’s look—complete with collector’s pieces—and mixing and matching it with elements from other eras.

  • Conran
]]> Design of the 20th Century https://midmodscout.com/product/design-of-the-20th-century/ Tue, 27 Jun 2017 21:32:49 +0000 http://midmodscout.com/product/design-of-the-20th-century/

Poised at the start of the 21st century, we can see clearly that the previous century was marked by momentous changes in the field of design. Aesthetics entered into everyday life with often staggering results. Our homes and workplaces turned into veritable galleries of style and innovation.

From furniture to graphics, it’s all here―the work of artists who have shaped and re-created the modern world with a dizzying variety of materials. From the organic to the geometric, from Art Deco, through to Pop and High-Tech, this book contains all the great names―Harry Bertoia, De Stijl, Dieter Rams, Philippe Starck, Charles and Ray Eames, to name only a very few.

This essential book is a comprehensive journey through the shapes and colors, forms and functions of design history in the 20th century. An A–Z of designers and design schools, which builds into a complete picture of contemporary living. Lavishly illustrated, this is design in the fullest sense.

  • Taschen
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