Calvin equals Paul McCobb?

The name Calvin Furniture has become almost synonymous with Paul McCobb. So much so that pieces which are clearly labeled as being made by other manufacturers (such as the Connoisseur Collection pieces by H. Sacks and Sons) are occasionally listed as being by Calvin even though the furniture label clearly states otherwise.



The truth is much furniture that you will see by Calvin is designed by Paul McCobb, but not all of it.

In the late 50's and early 60's Calvin Furniture continued their business relationship with B. G. Mesberg National Sales and Directional Furniture even after Paul McCobb was no longer designing for those concerns.

It’s important to know that Paul McCobb was not the designer for Calvin Furniture. Paul McCobb was the designer for Directional/B. G. Mesberg National Sales, Calvin Furniture was one of the many furniture manufacturers contracted to manufacture Paul McCobb's designs.

The earliest non-Paul McCobb designed group manufactured by Calvin that I am aware of is the 1959 American Design Foundation group, designed by Kipp Stewart and Stewart MacDougal. Amercian Design Foundation pieces are typically labeled on the inside of a drawer with the American Design Foundation label pictured here.

1959 American Design Foundation furniture label


The American Design Foundation Group was sold in department stores and I believe it was marketed by B. G. Mesberg National Sales, the same business entity that represented Paul McCobb's Planner, Perimeter and Linear Groups. The group was shaker inspired and consisted of Living Room, Dining Room and Bedroom furniture as seen in the following Bloomingdale's advertisement clipping taken from the July 31, 1960 edition of the New York Times.


American Design Foundation by Kipp Stewart and Stewart MacDougal
Bloomingdale’s 1959 American Design Foundation advertisement


Many people seeing the Calvin Label and the shaker influenced design instantly think that this must be another Paul McCobb group... especially looking at the bow tie dining chairs (top left) with their obvious similarity to the #430 Slip Seat chair designed by Paul McCobb for the Linear Group seen below in a 1958 advertisement from House and Garden.

House & Garden April 1958 page.40
1958 Linear Group Advertisement


It's interesting to note that at least one of the designs for the Kipp Stewart/Stewart MacDougal American Design Foundation group was not manufactured by Calvin Furniture at all. The chairs seen around the table in the 3rd illustration down on the left side of the ad were made by Winchendon Furniture (another company whose output is almost synonymous with Paul McCobb) and on more than one occasion have mistakenly been identified as being designed by Paul McCobb.

1959 American Design Foundation chairs designed by Kipp Stewart and Stewart MacDougal
manufactured by Winchendon Furniture

1959 American Design Foundation chair designed by Kipp Stewart and Stewart MacDougal 
manufactured by Calvin Furniture


Comments

  1. Dana@Mid2ModFebruary 21, 2011 at 11:04 PM

    Your ability to dig out all this documentation amazes me! So interesting!

    ReplyDelete
  2. SkiersmithSeptember 3, 2011 at 8:46 AM

    Bought a $5 end table last week and later found the plaque "Calvin Grand Rapids, The Irwin Collection designed by Paul McCobb". If you would like a picture of it, please feel free to ask. After extensive research on the web, I was unable to find anything that looks like it. Its in poor condition but beautiful nonetheless. Interestingly, I found your blog and it fascinates me. I remember my Aunt had a house full of furniture that looks like all the pieces on the Planner line. I wonder now what happened to those pieces!

    ReplyDelete
  3. AnonymousJuly 9, 2012 at 3:48 PM

    Just recently found one of the 1959 Calvin ADF chairs you listed above. I have been searching for weeks to find what it was. Thanks for the posting!

    ReplyDelete
  4. AnonymousJuly 9, 2012 at 3:51 PM

    Thanks for the posting. I found one of the Calvin ADF chairs a while ago and have been searching to find out what it is ever since - no more searching necessary!

    ReplyDelete
  5. AdamJuly 9, 2012 at 3:51 PM

    Thanks for the posting. I found one of the Calvin ADF chairs a while ago and have been searching to find out what it is ever since - no more searching necessary!

    ReplyDelete
  6. AnonymousJuly 28, 2013 at 3:14 PM

    I have the complete 1959 set (2 chairs pictured above) by Stewart/MacDougal for American Design Foundation for Winchendon Furniture Co.
    6 chairs, dining table, end table and china cabinet bought at Blooningdales in 1961. Cherry wood with black vinyl!

    ReplyDelete
  7. UnknownFebruary 6, 2015 at 8:59 PM

    fabulous resource! thank you for sharing!

    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