Wow!

Spent the day today with Paul McCobb's daughter Melissa and her husband Andrew sorting through a recently re-discovered archive of her father's design work (it's amazing what you can find in the attic some days).

The upshot is I now have in my possession several project reference binders, chock full of press photos, furniture catalogs, and 35mm color slides put together by Paul McCobb himself as a reference for his work.

It is an incredible cornucopia of new and better information+ new and better images.

But it's only on loan so I will need to make quick work of it, scanning and cataloging all the new information.

The Gift Craft office set is in it and the Electro-Voice Organ (both of which I had been having a very hard time finding elsewhere); Mutschler, Blair, Lane, Widdicomb and Paul McCobb showroom catalogs, plus the 1955 Executive Office catalog. There are real surprises in here, things that I did not even suspect existed (no pictures of any globes though...) and a good concise reference for pretty much everything Paul McCobb had ever designed.

I'll be sure to put up some more new stuff soon as I get all of this info bagged and tagged.

Thanks for a great day Melissa!

Jonathan

Comments

  1. Scott LindbergAugust 1, 2010 at 1:38 PM

    Wow ... I can't wait to see what you discovered! Sounds like you had a great time!

    ReplyDelete
  2. GeneAugust 3, 2010 at 11:20 PM

    That is a fantastic development. How exciting that you'll be able to finish up your research this year and get to the task of writing!

    ReplyDelete
  3. AnonymousAugust 4, 2010 at 12:13 PM

    No hurry to get it "back in the attic"! Don't forget to come up for air and food occasionally between scanning session.

    Melissa

    ReplyDelete
  4. UnknownOctober 18, 2013 at 8:06 AM

    This is all so very exciting! We can't wait to see the catalogue for the Mutschler M700 series since that is what is in our entire house! :)

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Lane: By The Numbers

Image
A short time ago I put up a little bit of info on  Instagram  about Lane's Signature and Components groups by Paul McCobb now here's the rest of the info. McCobb's work for Lane, produced between 1961 and 1965 was comprised of three group: Delineator ,  Signature , and Components . Signature and Components pieces have proven to be relatively hard to come by so far (which is not to say that Delineator pieces are exactly littering the planet, but they are far easier to obtain than their cousins). Lane pieces (at least the tables) are easy to understand as they're typically marked with not only the design group number but they also have a "serial number" right below the design number, which is actually the production date written in reverse, so, once you know what you're looking for the tables are easy to identify. And that nicely brings us right around to the topic of this article which is a quick and dirty primer on how to identify Paul McCobb's des...
Read more

Tables by Lane

Image
Over the past few years I have become increasingly aware of the necessity for context in research. At the very beginning of this project I was so narrowly focussed on getting information about Paul McCobb that I ignored anything else that wasn’t about McCobb. For instance, when I scanned the 1962 Lane catalog I entirely ignored the rest of it, only scanning those pages which dealt directly with Paul McCobb’s work. I later regretted this decision but there was really nothing to do about it as the catalog was in California and I wasn’t. Fortunately life has conspired to make it so that I can finally right this egregious oversight, Gerard O’Brien of Reform Gallery  (the fellow who has the Lane catalog) having decided to show select pieces from his Paul McCobb collection at the upcoming Los Angeles Antiques and Los Angeles Modernism shows at the Barker Hanger this April has called me in to work with him co-producing these Paul McCobb retrospectives, which means...
Read more

A Tale of Two Chairs (or Paul McCobb vs. Clifford Pascoe)

Image
Early in my collecting career I bought what I thought was a Paul McCobb Bentwood and Iron side chair. I was ecstatic! It was an amazing bargain at only $65.00. Obviously the fellow I was purchasing it from didn't know what he had. He even tried to convince me that it was not by McCobb. But I Knew Better! Later on I learned just how little I actually knew and that what I had so vehemently thought was a Paul McCobb chair very clearly wasn't by Paul McCobb at all. I didn't know who it had been designed by, but I decided that I was going to find out. This was an important part of the long chain of events that ultimately led to my Paul McCobb research project. Now on with our article... Paul McCobb designed Planner Group Chair from Interiors, June 1951 A picture of the 1535 Chair in my own collection In 1951 Paul McCobb introduces his iconic #1535 Planner Group Bentwood and Iron Chair (above). The #1535 side chair was rather expensive, retailing for $29.95, as compared ...
Read more