Posts

Showing posts from June, 2010

A word about updates

This blog of mine is a living breathing thing. What I post on here is information based upon my continuing research into the life and design career of Paul McCobb (just like the title says). The act of writing a post on a subject does not signify that I have stopped researching this particular topic. I write when I believe that I have sufficient information to present my case clearly and authoritatively. Some of you might have noticed that there have been alterations and additions recently to older posts like the Design Timeline and the Lamp Post. As I get better information I will include it here providing it is pertinent to the subject at hand... The best is yet to come!

And now... The Wine Racks

Image
Paul McCobb was a hard worker. People who knew him well frequently had this to say about him. He and his wife Molly were constantly working. What’s interesting is that he somehow managed to keep working (if we are to believe certain items commonly attributed to him) for several years after he passed away. Now that’s what I call dedication! Obviously there have been mistakes made along the way as far as Paul McCobb attributions are concerned, much of my blogging on here has been about debunking these misattributions and today’s blog post is no exception as I delve into yet another common misattribution, the wine racks. Though commonly attributed to Paul McCobb these Wrought Iron, Leather and Butcher Block Wine Racks were in fact designed by Arthur Umanoff for Shaver Howard and distributed by Raymor around 1971/1972 with the possibility that they might have started manufacture as early as 1967 and possibly continued production as late as 1980. I first became aware of the probable cor

The case against the Globes

Have you ever seen the "Paul McCobb" World Globes? The ones frequently attributed to Directional? The ones with the very nice curved brass frames and a Replogle globe? They really are rather gorgeous, aren't they? There's only one problem, it seems highly unlikely that they were actually designed by Paul McCobb. Over the past year I have scoured books, newspapers, industry periodicals, furniture catalogs, library collections, etc, traveling around the country where necessary, gathering data about Paul McCobb's work. I have 100's of hours invested in this research. I now have a database containing several thousands of articles from 1936 to 1969 weighing in at a little over 3 gigs of data. One thing I have not found over the past year's research is a single mention of Paul McCobb ever having designed a Globe. With this much information you would think that I might have found some reference, somewhere, anywhere, but as best I can determine there is nothing t