Overman whats the good word on the other Arne Jacobsen  

to each his own......
......... Viva La Diference !
you are completely within your rights to love overmann...... nothing really wrong with that.
if you love it, then enjoy it and use it.
bon apetite !
(just try not to directly compare it to, or elevate it to the level of arne jacobsen's work or you will get an ear-full as evident on this thread)

Furniture Monster
Sorry to make a bad first impression.
Any radical shift in thinking represents a risk. Humans are hard-wired to like things just the way they are - the status quo is our comfort zone.
So, designers like Arne Jacobsen represent enormous risk-taking in terms of development, material knowledge, design, and production techniques. Sometimes these leaps succeed (Jacobsen, Eames, Saarinen etc) Sometimes they fail.
When something new succeeds and reaches a tipping point the status quo suddenly sees itself as out of touch, and races to catch up. What then happens is a cultural shift resulting in a new vernacular language (of art, architecture, music, literature, design, etc) What was once cutting edge is now the new status quo.
Jacobsen's success spurred companies like Overman to rapidly produce a slew of products that mimic the most successful qualites of the original design. The same thing happened to Eames (with Plycraft & Kruger) and Saarinen (with Burke).
Overman products are perfectly decent, usable, and fun - just like a Plycraft chair or a Burke table. But as other people have said, these companies don't have the same 'genius designer' structure as Knoll or Herman Miller or Fritz Hansen. Much of the decisions were made based on the unglamorous market forces of designed-obsolescence (Plycraft released dozens of variants of the Eames chair) marketability, and popular tastes. Even a company as renowned as George Nelson Associates rested on the laurels of it's principal, but on the reality of anonymous staff designers.

good explanation......
thanks for making the effort and articulating and explaining some finer points LuciferSum
when you touch on the subject of plycraft & george nelson associates and the designers employed there-in, a more complex scenario surfaces regarding designs, evolution and designer credits.
george mulhauser designed for plycraft and most of his designs were clearly inspired and derived from the eames design, particularly the eames lounge and ottoman. but they did so many variations on it that a few of them approached uniqueness and displayed design traits that were interesting in their own right, even if they were derivative.
many of the unique designs credited to george nelson were actually designed by irving harper who was a staff designer at george nelson associates..... the marshmallow sofa is a good example.
it gets even more confusing when you consider that the nelson pretzel chair, was initially fabricated by plycraft, but then redesigned by cherner and evolved into what is now known as the cherner chair.
you can consider that overmann was the european equivalent of plycraft..... they had some interesting designs and its fun and fine to buy and use these, but in terms of strict design lineage all the credit really has to go to the original designers and manufacturers who re-invented the wheel in the first place.... in this specific case it would be arne jacobsen and fritz hansen

You know, furniture monster,...
You know, furniture monster, you may have, as others have suggested, embittered responses by way of semantics. The 'other Jacobsen' was probably not the best choice of words, albeit an appropriate and obvious point of reference, but good for you anyway for not taking your ball finally and going home.
That said, a DA search can sometimes reveal pertinent information. For example, a DA thread initiated on September 29, 2001, by one Daniel Goodwin, produced responses indicating Overman furniture designs by:
Hans Ehrlin
Michael Bjornstjerma
Svante Schoblom
I haven't done a general Google search beyond that.
But might this not be a start, maybe.

Avoided
Lol... I debated whether to delve into the Mulhauser relationship with Plycraft and Nelson Associates (he designed the Coconut chair) for fear it might get way too muddied. But his contributions to both mfgrs is far underappreciated and unexplored - not to mention hilARious!

yowsa......
....... what did they call that, the Ram Chair ??
here's an interesting bio of nelson......
http://www.georgenelson.org/biographymore.html

Wowsa is right!
Is this a di Frutta original?

There was one...
On eBay recently... I don't think the reserve was met.

Thank You
Thank you to everyone that has taken the time to discuss this topic and share their knowledge of several designers. The last few post on this thread were very interesting and I learned a few new things.
I can def. see where my wording "the other Jacobsen" brought on some of the initial comments. and I understand that the quality and design is much better and came first I only used the name in the title because I thought some people would know the type of furniture i was talking about a reference of sorts to the style.
I did not in any way intend to say that they were of the same level of craftsmanship or that Overman had any kind of design genius behind the company similar to Jacobsen obviously Jacobsen set a new style into place that resonated through the design field bring copies of his style such as Overman that for the more common man like myself were more attainable at a cost far less than the great work of Jacobsen
I still love my Overman, copy or not it?s as good as I can afford for now until I become rich and famous lol.

Errrr?

Thonet?
That looks much more like Thonet than Mulhauser. Or maybe one of the later Thonet derivatives/copiers.