Background: I know Scandinavian modern/MC pretty well. Know nothing about American/German/Dutch/Italian MC.
I am pretty well steeped in Scandinavian moder/mid-century design. I would welcome an open-ended discussion about the differences between us and where you think we might be heading?
Historical context / french MCM
I highly encourage all fellow forumers to take a good look at this website.(Most will have to use google translate as it's all in french)
It has been developped by specialists who wanted to spread their knowledge about MCM modern design, and describe the relationship between the developpement of this design and the historical changes after WWII.
This allows us to see the different pieces of MCM furniture we all love from a different angle.
The site architecture allows to search by era, room, type of furniture, designers. It's full of period adds, links to videos (one of them showing the normalisation of furniture's production in Denmark in 1953!)
But, more important, it allows to understand how the space conception of every room of the house changed.
See for instance, this page showing the change of an old kitchen to a modern one, helped by the laminate revolution.
It reminds us that MCM design was meant to make the life easier to EVERY people.
Enjoy!
http://chahuts.com/albums/reconstruction/?item=24403
less is more, more or less
Any serious conversation would have to include Henry Dreyfuss. Based on my reading he would be on my short list of important American industrial designers; trumping "the father of industrial design" mentioned in the previous post.
Like FLW's coinage of "organic architecture" to promote his work, Loewy was a self-promotion visionary and his studio created and/or refined many iconic American logos in addition to fashionably streamlining product shells/skins for pencil sharpeners and carbonated sugar water dispensers.
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