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Showing posts from February, 2011

More about Kopenhavn

Digging a little bit deeper I have now discovered that Kopenhavn was a furniture group produced by Northwest Chair Co., one of those "nationally known brands" that no one ever actually seems to have heard of... but to their credit the Kopenhavn Wall Planner Group was a remarkably successful venture for Northwest Chair Co. and was in production through the entirety of the 1960's.  The group was designed by Noral Olson.  My best guess now is that the mystery clone chair was most likely a Northwest Chair Company chair but not specifically designed for the Kopenhavn group.

"Calvin equals Paul McCobb?" updated

Added a very nice image of another of the Kipp Stewart & Stewart MacDougal chairs for the American Design Foundation collection manufactured by Calvin Furniture . http://paulmccobb.blogspot.com/2010/10/calvin-equals-paul-mccobb.html

Attributed to?

Yesterday I saw research from here twisted and perverted to serve the ends of a craigslist furniture reseller. An outright lie in the description of a piece of furniture which was based, at least in part, on one of my very own blog posts debunking a common Paul McCobb misattribution. It has always been my hope that by providing true, accurate and authoritative information about Paul McCobb's designs and those of his imitators that I could stem the growing tide of misinformation. It makes me very sad to see my work used this way.

Kobenhavn

Image
"Needle in a haystack" and "tilting at windmills" are phrases that often run through my head when I'm trying to dig up some tidbit of information having little or nothing to go on besides a picture of the piece in question, but persistence and more than just a little bit of luck wins the day on the odd occasion. Take for instance these very nice shaker inspired chairs (photo's courtesy of Nic Mercure). Now they look a hell of a lot like the Paul McCobb's Planner Group #1531 chair by Winchendon Furniture.  Planner Group #1531 chairs designed by Paul McCobb But there are subtle differences. The McCobb Planner Group #1531 chair has no stretchers across the legs, also it's legs are attached through the seat. But you have to admit it's damn similar. Now my research has shown that McCobb designed this chair once and never revisited it. There was only ever one McCobb designed Windsor style chair and it's manufacture was exactly