Planner, Perimeter, Predictor, Paul McCobb

Arbuck Style No. 76 by Paul McCobb

2011-12-28T10:46:00.000-05:00

In a recent conversation with Mike Pratt, a fellow mid-century design researcher and the author of Mid-Century Modern Dinnerware: A Pictorial Guide (Schiffer 2002) he mentioned to me that one of the things he had learned doing his research is that we are getting newer, better information all the time and that what we publish, when we publish it, is really only an encapsulation of the state of our research at that moment in time, that there is every chance, given time, more will be revealed. Truer words could not have been said. Case in point:

Back in September I got an e-mail from Wright asking for information authenticating the above items which would ultimately appear as Lot 177 in their October 2011 Modern Design auction. Their request was for "information regarding the manufacturer and date of production" but what they really needed was confirmation that the table and chair in the above image were by Paul McCobb as they had been unable to find any historical reference to support the attribution; information which I had ready to hand and was more than happy to provide them. I did not know exactly who made the chair and table for McCobb so I gave them a very tentative guess that both the chair and table would have been manufactured by Furnwood Corp., as they were the only other producer of wrought iron furniture for Paul McCobb whose total output was not fully understood by me at that stage in my research. It was an error on my part to make any statement about a manufacturer when I had absolutely no information to either support or discredit the idea, as it turns out I could not have been more wrong about who made the chair.

But let's step back a bit because researching the chair alone is an interesting story. I found my first reference for this chair design more than two years ago in the 1953 W. J. Sloan and Company advertisement from the NY Times [1] seen below.

"Apartment size table (36' x 54" with 1 - 12" leaf) designed by Paul McCobb
Plastic top in birch or black, wrought iron legs 89.50
Side chair, white plastic seat, wrought iron 18.95"

I should mention that there's a rule which I have established to help make sure that I don't go off half cocked spouting about some new discovery only to find out later on that my original source was in error, it's pretty simple and straight forward: "Make sure that you have more than one source of information for any attribution." Truth is that there are errors and omissions in the period literature every bit as bad as some of the worst of the current day. Best to dot your i's and cross your t's...

How that applies here is that in the ad above only the table is clearly attributed to Paul McCobb and though it seemed likely to me that the chairs were also a Paul McCobb design I needed more than one solitary blip to even think about making a determination of this nature, and so the snippet was duly filed away in hopes that more information might surface at a later date.

Unfortunately after a protracted period of time no new information was forthcoming. The only other scant reference I had found in over two years of searching was a 1954 Bloomingdale's ad [2] where the same chairs were tantalizingly displayed without any attribution information whatsoever.

Then over the summer I learned of an online newspaper repository whose depths I had not yet scavenged. And there, lo and behold, was another reference to the mystery chair design [3] (below), the earliest I had found thus far, pre-dating the Sloane ad [1] by several months, and this time complete with a clear Paul McCobb attribution for the chair. Paydirt!

Besides the chair the article also describes a table as part of this un-named Paul Mccobb group and by the description it was not the same table design shown in the Sloane ad [1]. So we have a new design for the further research files. There's still no information about who was manufacturing this group of wrought iron furniture, but at least now its pretty clear that it existed and that it was introduced to the market sometime in the middle of 1953.

Now after more than two years spent researching a single subject I was starting to become a bit frazzled. When I first started out I firmly believed that I would have everything I needed to do the complete Paul McCobb history given a years worth of research time. Ahhh, how little I knew back then... I hadn't lost interest, I wasn't giving up, but I most definitely needed to take a break.

So what do you do to take a break when you've spent the past several years researching mid-century furniture and design? Research other designs and designers of course! During my tenure researching Paul MCcobb I have developed an increasingly expanding database of information about Paul McCobb's imitators and competitors. Now with a little bit of discretionary time on my hands I delved a little bit deeper into subjects, such as mid-century wrought iron furniture production, which I had become increasingly interested in, expanding my database even further and accruing information for what very well might eventually become a book on the subject (providing I ever get this Paul McCobb project finished and published...) It was while doing this "side research" that I stumbled upon what would ultimately be the rosetta stone to unlock the mystery of these wrought iron tables and chairs in the form of a small snippet from a 1955 Bloomingdale's sale advertisement [4].

Here at last we have a pictorial reference for the round table mentioned in the Dallas Morning News editorial (above) and of course yet another image and attribution for the wrought iron chairs (it's interesting to note that the textured Madagaska plastic upholstery has been replaced with white denim at this point). But what was really important about this image was the fact that I had seen that table before on page 38 of the 1958 "Wrought Iron by Arbuck" Catalog!

"Wrought Iron by Arbuck" catalog page 38

Since there is so little authoritative information floating around about the various Arbuck groups I suppose a note of explanation is in order if this narrative is to make any sense from here on out. The designs in the 1958 catalog are unattributed, nowhere is there any mention of who designed them and there is a reason for this; In the Mid-Century when a company contracted a designer to design a product for them they frequently also contracted with the designer for the use of their name in marketing the product, there would be a finite term that the company would be allowed the use of the designers name in associated marketing after which, even though they still might retain the rights to produce the furniture, (furniture designs were typically a "work for hire" where the designer was paid a fee for the designs along with a percentage of sales) the designers name would revert to being the property of the designer. In this case it seems the George Nelson and Paul McCobb designs were still the property of the company in 1958 but they likely no longer had the rights to use the designers name to promote these designs.

This catalog page (above) contains designs by George Nelson and Paul McCobb. The small stool and chair pictured lower center and the side chair on the lower right, listed as Style No. 70, are three of the George Nelson designs from Arbuck's 1950 George Nelson designed group [5]. The chair pictured top left as Style No. 74, along with the chair pictured top right as Style No. 75 and the room divider pictured bottom left as Style No. 75 are all Paul McCobb designs manufactured by Arbuck as seen in the 1953 "The Pavillion Collection of Wrought Iron designed by Paul McCobb " catalog.

"The Pavillion Collection of Wrought Iron
designed by Paul McCobb"

Leaving only the top center table listed as Style No. 76 unidentified. Now this table I had ignored previously, it didn't appear in anything else I had ever seen and honestly I had no idea about it, that is until I came across the 1955 Bloomingdale's ad [4], compared side by side we see that the tables are identical.

The most likely conclusion I can draw given the evidence at hand is that the chairs and table seen in the 1955 Bloomingdale's ad [4] and by extension the chairs and table seen in 1953 Sloane ad [1] were manufactured by Arbuck. And that's where my research stands at this point.

New York Times - November 8, 1953 page 94
New York Times - August 29, 1954 page 39
Dallas Morning News - July 26, 1953 part vi page 3
New York Times - June 19, 1955 page 48
New Furniture 1 edited by Gerd Hatje (1952), page 118

The Anatomy of a Paul McCobb Lamp

2011-10-04T09:20:00.000-04:00

Time and again I have seen the most spectacular misattributions when it comes to the Paul McCobb lamps. Some are entirely figments of an overactive imagination and as such are easily discounted, others being of very similar design to the actual lamps are the far more difficult to debunk since the three blind men and the elephant principle applies. Partial information almost always leads to incorrect conclusions.

So let's pose the question: What makes a Paul McCobb lamp a Paul McCobb lamp? Are there any specific design features which separate out the McCobb lamps from all the others on the planet? Not surprisingly the answer is yes... the greater portion of the McCobb lamps manufactured by Northcraft Lighting and Excelsior Art Studio had specific and unique design elements which are not repeated anywhere else in the centuries long canon of lamp manufacture.

First off no McCobb lamp for Northcraft Lighting and/or Excelsior Art Studio used a lamp harp to hang the shade. There are no lamp harps on these lamps. None whatsoever. Rumors of lamp harps are greatly exaggerated. Did I mention that there aren't any lamp harps? Yup, no lamp harps here, not even the hint of a lamp harp on a cold and blustery winter's day. No lamp harps!

So how the hell do you put on a lamp shade? The lamp shades would sit atop a piece of conical glass which was also used as a diffuser. Now those of you who know something about lamps and lamp manufacture in the 40's and 50's might say "Oh you mean those fairly common Milk Glass diffusers..." to which I would reply with a slight sigh of exasperation "No, not those"... The McCobb diffuser was a specially produced 7-1/8" tall tapered cylinder of white glass (called opal glass in the catalogs) measuring 3" at the base and 4-1/4" at the top, this conical glass diffuser would then sit into a purpose made metal cone. You can see this arrangement quite clearly in the photo (below left) of a Northcraft #2001 floor lamp currently offered for sale by Reform Gallery and also (below right) in this 1951 Directional advertisement introducing the Northcraft Lamps.

And though you cannot actually see the glass diffuser in these images of the Excelsior Art Studios lamps below, you can clearly see the cones into which the glass diffuser sat.

The arrangements are almost identical for both lighting groups, the one subtle difference being that for the 1954 Excelsior Art Studios lamps the receiving cone is not quite as deep as it is for the the 1951 Northcraft Lighting group. The 1951 Northcraft Group uses a cone 6-1/2" deep and the 1954 Excelsior Art Studios' cone is 5" deep. Northcraft lamps manufactured post 1954 also frequently use the same 5" deep cone. The Northcraft lamps came in either bright brass or a matte black finish btw, the Excelsior Art Studios lamps are only ever found in an bright brass finish.

Unfortunately time and the elements take their toll. These glass diffusers were quite fragile and easily broken, and, since their design was unique to the McCobb lamp designs, once one became damaged there was absolutely nowhere to go and get replacement parts. I imagine that once a diffuser got broken the lamps were most likely taken out of service (i.e. thrown away), this I suspect is one of the major contributing factors to the exceptional rarity of these lamps today.

The Real McCobb

2011-07-27T13:22:00.002-04:00

Here's a link to an article by Larry Weinberg of Weinberg Modern in the July 2011 issue of Interior Design magazine which I contributed to.

The Real McCobb: Mid Century's Paul McCobb is finally getting the recognition he deserves.

Pomona Tiles' Distinguished Designer Series

2011-06-25T03:16:00.003-04:00

The earliest reference that I have to the Distinguished Designer series is in the June 1957 issue of Art & Architecture where a two page Ponoma Tile ad announces the forthcoming release of their new "Distinguished Designer" tile series. The following text is quoted directly from this ad:

"Working under special assignment from Pomona Tile Manufacturing Company, five distinguished contemporary designers —Liebes, McCobb, Bass, Laszlo, and Sheets — have opened the way for scores of beautiful new uses and applications of decorative tiles for both residential and commercial construction. The project was an interesting challenge. The results...as usually happens when the true artist applies his talent to a new medium of creativity...are totally unexpected and unprecedented. And this inspiration, in turn, should beget a great new school of ideas, from architects, decorators, and builders. The first in the series will be introduced, in full color, in the forth-coming issue of this publication. Don't miss it! POMONA TILE, the creative name in ceramic floor and wall tile."

The second page contained brief bios of each of the designers:

PAUL McCOBB: functional furniture designer and originator of the "Linear look" in contemporary furniture. Famed for his imaginative uses of unorthodox materials, he recently introduced designs combining structural aluminum and natural woods. Winner of many "Best Design” awards

MILLARD SHEETS: water-colorist, muralist, illustrator, mosaicist, architectural designer, director, teacher, and lecturer. Winner of scores of awards for watercolors and other paintings, his works are to be seen in the permanent collections of more than forty museums and galleries.

DOROTHY LIEBES: textiles de-signer and colorist, and the winner of many national and international awards in art and design competitions. Director, trustee, and member of more than a score of art and professional societies and schools, her work has been exhibited in countless museum and gallery shows.

SAUL BASS: designer, consultant in integrated design-planning for industry; also well-known for unusual movie- title designs. Teacher, lecturer, and member of the executive board of the International Design Conference at Aspen. Winner of scores of national and international awards

PAUL LASZLO: industrial designer and interior designer. He is a renowned exponent of the new "romantic movement" in home interiors. Known as a "radical architect" in Vienna before World War II, he says he follows no formula or dogma except what he terms "ABC's of good design, artistry, beauty, comfort.”

In this initial advertisement there were no images of the tiles, these weren't to come until later on. These first three magazine clippings showing Dorothy Liebes, Millard Sheets and Paul Laszlo's designs I acquired from Cathy of California's blogpost on Pomona Tile. Great work btw Cathy.

So that only leaves Paul McCobb and Saul Bass for the 1957 series of tiles. My research has shown that McCobb did three tile designs for Pomona but only one of them was ever publicized, that being "Roulette", seen here in a full page ad from Arts & Architecture 's August 1957 issue.

The only reason I have any knowledge of the other two patterns is because Gerard O'Brien, whose pioneering work archiving information on Paul McCobb is the basis of my own continued research, had managed to obtain what is seemingly the sole surviving copy of an original Distinguished Designer collection brochure. It is from this resource that we get images of the remaining Paul McCobb designs.

In 1961 a subtle addition was made to the McCobb designs with the inclusion of a new colorway for the popular "Roulette" tile design (the following is quoted from page 283 of the October 1961 issue of Interior Design)

New Tile Color

The Pomona Tile Manufacturing Company, has announced a new color variation, designed by Paul McCobb. on its Decorator Tile Roulette. The new tile is in blues and greens while the original design utilized the red-orange hues. Samples are available at any Pomona Tile showroom or distributor.

For the longest time I had despaired of ever finding a color image of this change in the design but as luck would have it I recently managed to acquire examples of all of the Paul McCobb designs for Pomona Tile including one of the 1961 "Roulette" tile! This is a scan of the actual tile.

It's interesting to note that the two examples I have found of Paul McCobb's "Starspray" tile design do not exactly reproduce the colors shown in the brochure. Again this is a scan of an actual tile in my collection.

For the Saul Bass designs I was fortunate enough to have stumbled across another Pomona Tile brochure in my meanderings over the past few years which has all three of his ""Bass" Relief" tile designs (seriously, that's what they were called... I am not making this up...).

In late 1958 Pomona contracted two more design luminaries to add to the Distinguished Designer series. This time out were chosen famous designer and watercolorist Dong Kingman

and the inimitable George Nelson who I think needs no further explanation...

As a final note it seems that the Distinguished Designer tiles had a long healthy run, they were sold from 1957 to at least 1963 according to a small blurb in the back of the March 1963 issue of Arts & Architecture.

Los Angeles Modernism Show 2011

2011-05-25T17:48:00.001-04:00

Los Angeles Modernism Show 2011, a set on Flickr.

Los Angeles Antiques Show 2011

2011-04-16T00:38:00.006-04:00

Los Angeles Antiques Show 2011, a set on Flickr.

Digging through the crates

2011-04-13T08:00:00.006-04:00

When I was asked for a quote from Paul McCobb to put into the brochure for Reform Gallery’s Paul McCobb/Directional Design exhibit at the Los Angeles Antiques Show I figured that it wouldn’t be too difficult finding something appropriate. I wasn’t exactly hard pressed for material after all. McCobb was interviewed frequently during the 50’s and 60’s and I have literally thousands of articles to choose from. The challenge was to find something simple, succinct and to the point.

As it turns out much of McCobb’s interviews are not at all about design or process but rather tend towards giving helpful hints to homemakers. In fact there is an entire series of articles doing just that, making suggestions to homemakers about how to go about decorating their homes; tips and tricks to aid in providing a “light, airy and spacious” home in a time of shrinking rooms and diminishing scale of the household environment. Great stuff from a historical standpoint, but not exactly sexy.

McCobb was also a great champion of the American contemporary furniture movement, defending it repeatedly in print. His being one of the prime moving forces behind this faction of American designers it’s easy to understand why he would speak frequently and passionately about the design trend of which he was such an integral part.

Unfortunately this material was not what I was looking for. What I really wanted was some few words or a phrase which would sum up Paul McCobb in a nutshell. Finding this was turning out to be not quite so easy as I thought it would be. But, as I’ve learned through the past few years doing this research, persistence pays, and after scanning through the material at my disposal for some time I finally found something which was EXACTLY what I was looking for, a precise summation of everything I knew Paul McCobb to be.

"Design appeal is based on integrity of form, simplicity of line, and true organic function."

- Paul McCobb

Interiors July, 1952

Tables by Lane

2011-04-03T02:40:00.021-04:00

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 that once again I find myself in Los Angeles for an extended period of time with unrestricted access to what might be the very best privately held mid-century design research library on the planet. Yay!

While I am here, besides working around the clock getting the two shows up, I am also going back over the ground which I have already covered in my Paul McCobb research (in my off hours...) and this time making sure to acquire the background information to provide context to my main research materials. Amongst other things I have finally gotten a complete scan of that 1962 Lane Catalog.

Now I’m not about to blurt out everything I have learned about Paul McCobb’s involvement with Lane, after all I have to save something for the book which I have been diligently but ever so slowly putting together. What I would like to provide is some context in the form of identifying information for the other Lane groups in existence at the time Paul McCobb was designing for the company. So, without further preamble, here they are in the order in which they appear in the 1962 "Tables that make your room are made by Lane" catalog:

Dimension - Group # 1003
Acclaim - Group #900
Hy-Lite - Group #’s 928, 929, 930
Tuxedo - Group #921
New Amsterdam - Group #957
Chatham Hall - Group #958 and 959
Monte Carlo - Group #973
Award - Group #966 and 972
Rhythm - Group #997
Lido - Group #’s 975, 978, 994
Cosmopolitan - Group #209
Esteem - Group #983
Prophecy - Group #996 and 1006
Accent - Group #991
Calais - Group #’s 953, 954, 955, 956, 968, 969
Capri - Group #999
Regal - Group #1002
Perception - Group #908 and 990
Cameo - Group #967

Raymor

2011-03-13T13:18:00.006-04:00

As I start writing the chapter on Raymor I realize that I've only identified eleven lamps designed by Paul McCobb for Raymor between 1946 and 1953. I am sure that there were more than eleven designs made over this seven year collaboration. Unfortunately this is all that I have been able to dig up.

I would still love to get a look at any Raymor catalogs published between 1946 and 1953 (I do have scans of pages from 1953) which might help in determining the provenance of several lamps which I suspect were designed by McCobb for Raymor during this time period, but at this point I have all but given up hope of being able to locate such resources.

If any kind reader should happen to have, or know the whereabouts of, any Raymor catalogs please, please, please let me know!

More about Kopenhavn

2011-02-25T20:33:00.001-05:00

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

2011-02-21T01:30:00.000-05:00

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?

2011-02-10T09:18:00.000-05:00

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

2011-02-04T13:44:00.001-05:00

"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 #1530 chair by Winchendon Furniture.

Planner Group #1530 chairs designed by Paul McCobb

But there are subtle differences. The McCobb Planner Group #1530 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 the same (barring variations in finish) for the entire 14 years of the Planner Group run.

So now we ask that eternal question: "If it's not McCobb, then who made it?"

And for the longest time the answer was "I have no idea" and it probably would have stayed that way except for one small thing. Recently in closing out my Paul McCobb research I have been revisiting several databases which I had already mined for information. Part of this due diligence is going back through these databases and getting creative with my search parameters in hopes of turning up something new. In this case I was searching for planner + group where previously I had searched for "planner group" as one phrase (it makes a difference!). Now as it turns out there was a furniture group named "Kobenhavn" in the early 60's which consisted of a series of "Wall Planner Units". Being an inquisitive sort I decided to take a look at what they were offering and what do you know there was the mystery chair!

Clipping taken from Twin Falls Times News June 12, 1960 page 5

Now by no means is this ad conclusive, certainly not authoritative, there is no direct attribution to the chair in question, nor is there any direct attribution in any of the other advertising material that I have found relating to this design group. But it's certainly suggests that the chair was produced as a part of the "Wall Planner Units" group by Kopenhavn, the same image is repeated in advertising from across the USA. If nothing else we now have a rough date of production...

Furnette

2011-01-14T23:03:00.005-05:00

Furnette Industries, Inc. was a furniture manufacturing concern located in the Bronx, NY. According to a June 11, 1962 New York Times article titled "Modern Furniture Can Be Assembled in the Home" Furnette started operation in 1945, little else is known about the early years of the company.

What we do know is that in 1957 Furnette started promoting a line of contemporary furnishings titled the Gallery Group, designed by Mark J. Furst and Robert Fellner (who also owned the company). As a curious side note my research has recently shown that this grouping had been in the market since 1955 [1]. Their mix and match design philosophy attracted some attention in the media and that is where our story begins. Along with their case pieces the new Gallery Group had a series of brass framed shelf units or hutches remarkably similar to Paul McCobb's designs.

This first illustration is a Halpern and Gillman advertisement from page 17 of the November 11, 1957 issue of the New York Times. This particular hutch is the most common of the group by far and, in my experience, almost always misattributed to Paul McCobb. Hell, if I didn't know better I would have thought that this was a Paul McCobb design, but my research very clearly proves otherwise.

Furnette wall cabinet and hutch designed by Robert Felner & Mark J Furst

A modern photo (below), culled from a recent craigslist posting, of the same Furnette hutch illustrated above with drawers flipped

Furnette brass hutch designed by Robert Fellner and Mark J. Furst

Another Halpern and Gillman ad (below) showing more of the Gallery Group hutches, this one taken from the New York Times November 10, 1958 page 20.

Furnette designed by Robert Fellner & Mark J Furst

The next few photo's are modern photos, from various sources, of the brass hutches pictured in the above ad.

Identical shelf unit (below) to the one picture top left of the above Halpern and Gillman November 10, 1958 advertisement (photo courtesy of www.wright20.com)

Brass shelf designed by Robert Fellner and Mark J. Furst for Furnette

A much better representation (below) of the unit sketched in the middle left of the above Halpern and Gillman November 10, 1958 advertisement (photo from www.wright20.com).

Furnette breakfront top designed by Robert Fellner and Mark J. Furst

There are subtle differences in construction between the Directional and Furnette brass shelf units. The McCobb/Directional brass frames were brazed (a process similar to soldering but done at higher temperatures) where the Furnette pieces are screwed together from underneath. It is because of this difference in construction that the Furnette shelves can not follow a straight line when interrupted by a brass upright causing some of their larger designs to have a slightly lopsided/uneven look to them such as in the photo above where the center shelf is at a slightly different level from the top of the drawers. Admittedly it takes a studied eye and a fair amount of highly esoteric knowledge to know to look for these subtleties let alone be able to easily spot them.

Photo (below) of the unit pictured on the bottom left of the November 10, 1958 Halpern and Gillman advertisement (photo from www.ragoarts.com)

Bench, Cabinet and shelf unit designed by Robert Fellner and Mark J. Furst

Yet another Furnette shelf unit designed by Robert Fellner & Mark J Furst (below) as pictured in the Yonkers Herald Statesman September 25, 1958.

The breakfront pictured below, designed by Robert Fellner and Mark J. Furst, is also amongst those Furnette designs misattributed to Paul McCobb (scan taken from The New York Times April 26, 1959 page 80)

[1] New York Times "Brass Touches Brighten New Room Dividers of Wood" January 19, 1955 page 31

A Room Divided

2011-01-13T21:36:00.004-05:00

There are very few new ideas in the world of furniture design when you get right down to it. Chairs are chairs, tables continue to be tables. So it's a very rare occasion when a truly new and original design concept comes into being. Paul McCobb managed to do this with the introduction of the open shelf room divider in 1952.

The following images detail the majority of Paul McCobb's open shelf room divider designs.

One of the most iconic and easily recognized of all of Paul McCobb's designs is the 1952 Irwin Collection #7905/9305 brass and mahogany open shelf room divider (below) the very first design of it's kind.

Page taken from the 1952 Irwin Collection catalog

The open shelf room divider concept was replicated again and again throughout the Paul McCobb design groups of the 1950's. A l954 addition to the Irwin Collection added the 1092/1093 Room Divider (below).

Page 55 of the 1956 Directional Designs by Paul McCobb catalog

and the 36" #7903 Room Divider top was also added at about this time (below)

Page 20 of the 1956 Directional Designs by Paul McCobb catalog

1953 saw the addition of the #1596 wrought iron and maple room divider for the Planner Group (below)

Page 6 of the 1953 California State Fair Art Exhibit brochure

For 1954's Calvin Group the 1066/1095 66" Buffet Cabinet with 60" Breakfront Top was added (below)

Page 34 of the 1956 Directional Designs by Paul McCobb catalog

This #495/496 aluminum and walnut room divider was added in 1956 for the Linear Group (below).

1956 publicity photo from the McCobb family archives

1957's Perimeter Group had it's own take on the room divider with it's all beech #2697 Room Divider top (below right).

Page 5 of the 1957 "Perimeter Group designed by Paul McCobb" brochure

And finally in 1959 the Planner Group got a second room divider design, the #1597 model in solid maple (below) as a replacement for the long discontinued #1596 wrought iron and maple room divider.

Bloomingdale's advertisement, NY Times June 5, 1960 page 33

Country Workshop

2011-01-01T12:24:00.008-05:00

If you have been following the blog you will already know a bit about Clifford Pascoe's designs for Modernmasters (see: "A Tale of Two Chairs" and "The Daybed that Paul McCobb should have designed...") which were very clearly based upon Paul McCobb's 1951-1952 Planner Group offerings and Arthur Umanoff's designs for Peter De Jardin's Tropic Shop (see: "Sincerest Form of Flattery") which channeled the design synthesis of Paul McCobb's Planner Group and his designs for Directional.

Another of the copycats was Country Workshop owned by Josh Millstein. Country Workshop sold their unfinished furniture directly from their factory in Newark, NJ to local patrons. They also sold mail order via ads in national magazines such as House & Garden and Living for Young Homemakers.

Country Workshop was in operation, to my certain knowledge, from 1951 to 1974. One of the earlier references that I have been able to find is in a January 28, 1952 New York Times article titled "Free-Stand Wall Provides Storage":

"The Country Workshop, 95 Rome Street, Newark, is offering small bookcases, chests or other pieces of unpainted furniture. These are made of solid poplar. The cabinets are furnished with sliding doors of Novaply. The chests have woodfaced drawers.
The single-shelf bookcases, the cabinets (which have one shelf) and the three-drawer chests come in four different sizes, all twentynine inches high. The smallest bookcase, nine and a half inches deep and twenty-four inches wide, costs about $10.
The units have detachable legs five inches high or may be stacked on a matching bench, available in five different lengths. Two desks one with three drawers on one side and two legs on the other and the second supported by three drawers on each of its two sides complete the collection."

Reading this initial description one might not think much it but I have seen their work frequently being confused with Paul McCobb's designs.

Country Workshop advertisement. New York Times Sunday Magazine March 30, 1958, page 75

The Country Workshop cases and benches were 16" deep where the McCobb Planner Group designs are 18". Many of the Country Workshop case pieces are virtually identical to the Planner Group cases barring this small detail.

The stock configuration of attached legs were 5" tapered peg legs mounted at 90 degrees to the cases (straight up and down) but there was also an option of splayed tapered peg legs identical in appearance to their Planner Group counterparts as seen in the ad below, the only significant difference being that the Country Workshop legs used a metal screw to attach to a threaded metal socket where the Planner Group legs are tapped with wooden threads much like a broom handle.

Popular Science December 1954 page 172

Country Workshop craftsmanship was of inferior quality, lacking the through-dovetails used by Winchendon Furniture to invisibly join the sides, tops and bottoms of the Planner group cases.

Amongst other things Country Workshop was one of several manufacturers who made a variant of the Clifford Pascoe/Modernmasters bentwood and iron chair (see below) which was so remarkably similar to Paul McCobb's own Planner Group #1535 chair (A copy of a copy! Confusing isn't it?). The major difference between the Country Workshop chair and the Modernmasters chair was that the Country Workshop's chair had a continuously curving backrest, the metal frames were, for all intents and purposes, identical.

Country Workshop (L) and Modernmasters (R) chairs side-by-side.
New York Times March 8, 1953 page 84.

Country Workshop also had two desk designs along the lines of the iconic Planner Group #1560 desk. The main difference being that the Country Workshop desks (there were two distinct designs) had three drawers instead two. Not an improvement to my mind.

Country Workshop Advertisement.
Living For Young Homemakers February 1952 page 22

In 1958 Country Workshop introduced their own version of the Planner Group "Golf Pull". It is their use of this drawer hardware which causes the most confusion amongst the uninitiated.

House & Garden March 1962 page 102

Pictured below is a Country Workshop "4 Deep 4 Shallow" 48 inch chest of drawers complete with McCobb style drawer pulls. The design is depicted in the lower left corner of the large Country Workshop March 1958 ad. The similarities in design/construction and use of like drawer pull hardware make it almost impossible for those not exceptionally well versed in the ins and outs of mid-century furniture identification and Paul McCobb in particular to tell the difference.

1960's Country Workshop "4 Deep 4 Shallow" 48 inch chest of drawers
for sale at Lost City Arts

Just a thought...

2010-12-21T23:51:00.000-05:00

I find it interesting that Paul McCobb Design Associates employees prior to 1956 are really rather hard to find and frequently impossible to locate and/or find out much about their continuing careers. Those folks hired after 1956 are easy as their careers flourished upon departing Paul McCobb Design Associates. I am starting to get the idea that Paul McCobb had access to a much higher caliber of employee post 1956.

Hitting the wall

2010-12-12T05:43:00.002-05:00

There comes a time in any project of this nature where you hit a wall, where it seems there can't possibly be any more information out there to be found. This can be very frustrating when you still have unresolved questions and no clear way to find the answers, but, as I have discovered, this is part and parcel of the research process and there's really nothing to it but to take a step back and find something else to focus on.

Recently I have been very hard pressed to find any new tidbits of data so I did what I always do when I hit these plateaus, I start going through the files already in my research archive; further organizing, annotating and filing the bits and pieces that I have already collected.

Part of doing this forces me to send my scanned clippings through a text recognition program. This is the kind of drudge work which I am normally loathe to take upon myself especially when you take into account the huge backlog of articles in my research archive and the glacial speed at which this exceptionally good and accurate text recognition software does it's job. There are two very good reasons for doing this however:

It makes the documents searchable.
It forces you to review what is already there.

Each time I have taken this plunge into the archives I always seem to come up with some fresh, new, yet unexplored, avenue of research (Admittedly a big part of what fuels these creative insights might very well be my aversion to doing the task at hand, but you have to take inspiration where it comes and try not to look a gift horse in the mouth). To wit:

One of the things I have squirreled away in my research archive is a scan of a sheet of Paul McCobb Design Associates letterhead, courtesy of Mr. McCobb's daughter, it's a blank sheet of letterhead and undated. On this letterhead are listed the names of the associates in Paul McCobb Design Associates at that time. It was a document that I had not looked at since scanning it several months ago.

Some of the names on it were already known to me, Chon Gregory, Paul McCobb's right hand man and second in command is listed there, but I already knew that Mr. Gregory had passed away a few years back having already examined that line of research, also listed as an associate is Paul McCobb's wife Molly; she too died many years ago, which left me with a very short list of names to look into. Now seemed like a very good time to do so, it was either that or to keep working on the existing files...

So I set to it and surprisingly both of the gentlemen listed were fairly easy to locate. A few short phone calls and emails later and I had suddenly assembled a considerably longer list of persons formerly in the employ of Paul McCobb Design Associates than I had ever really hoped to achieve, especially considering the amount of time which has passed since the company was last in operation (another good maxim to follow is to set your sights low and allow yourself to be pleasantly pleased when your anticipations are exceeded rather than maintaining high expectations which are repeatedly crushed by the exigencies of the universe, but enough about the zen of research)

This past week has been spent searching out and interviewing these former Paul McCobb Design Associates employees. I have to say that I am very pleased with the results, many of the people I have contacted have been very generous with their time and most helpful. I will not list names in consideration of those individuals privacy but thanks to you all.

Amongst the things I have learned this week:

McCobb Associates did design a typewriter for Remington Rand (no one I have interviewed is certain whether this typewriter was ever actually put into production...)
The Paul McCobb shop, which was the very first of it's kind, on the 5th floor of Bloomingdale's in New York City was not a unique venture, there were several other McCobb Shops set up at high profile retailers around the country.

I've also learned quite a bit more about a very obscure chair Paul McCobb designed for Thonet and other interesting Paul McCobb related facts and stories and I haven't even finished going through the list yet.

More to come.

The Planner Group - All 'Round Square

2010-11-25T00:48:00.010-05:00

It's stark sleekness and simplicity of line made the #1305 All 'Round Square a longstanding staple of Paul McCobb design in the 1950's. Where other designs came and went the All 'Round Square seemingly never went out of style. Measuring 20" x 20" x 16" it was made entirely of rather crudely welded 1/2" round wrought iron with flat tabs welded to the top of the frame to attach the seat.

The McCobb original should not be mistaken for the Frederic Weinberg stool which is of remarkably similar construction. The Weinberg stool measures 16" x 16" x 14".

Nominally a part of the Planner Group the All 'Round Square, manufactured by the Winchendon Furniture Company, was introduced into the line in Spring/Summer 1952. The earliest known reference to it in my research archive is this Frank Brothers ad taken from the July 13, 1952 issue of the Long Beach Press-Telegram (below). It was sold at the time for $19.95.

The ad mentions a companion table in "clear blond birch", which, judging by the pictures and sketches was the same wrought iron frame with a solid wood top. Very few of these have survived to the present day, partly, I suspect, due to the fact that not very many were made or sold. This introductory 1952 ad is the only mention I have been able to find of there ever having been a table top version.

The All 'Round Squares can be found in almost any conceivable upholstery fabric. Most typically they were upholstered in Masland Duran or Naugahyde with White and Black being the most common original color choices by far, but certainly they were available in a multitude of fabrics, colors and patterns over time.

As a final note the All 'Round Square's are never signed anywhere on the base or body. They were marked only with a hang tag (a small cardboard tag attached to the iron frame by a piece of string) proclaiming "this is a Paul McCobb design".

The sincerest form of flattery

2010-11-20T15:37:00.011-05:00

Every so often there pops up an item which on first look seems so obviously to be by a known designer that even the most experienced and knowledgeable people will not bother to question it’s provenance and authenticity since it’s creator seems to be proven by the “look and feel” of the object itself. The truth of the matter is that the Mid Century was rife with design copycats and outright knockoffs and not everything should be taken at face value. The following quote is taken from the August 22, 1954 New York Times article “The Pros and Cons of Copying” by Betty Pepis:

Designer Paul McCobb says of his inexpensive Planner Group: “Approximately a dozen manufacturers copied this line. Of this number we can name at least three who purchased our goods, brought them into their factory and copied them right down to the last detail. We were also given reports that the merchandise was being sold openly as direct copies. Prices were the same as the original—or above.”

And architect George Nelson, referring to the flagrant copying of his plastic bubble for lighting, writes: “It has reached the point where we cannot tell whether we are looking at an original or a copy without a rather close examination."

Now here’s an example of a copycat design which has managed to fool even the most experienced and knowledgeable design researchers in the past.

Arthur Umanoff designed #618 2 Drawer Cabinet
for Peter du Jardin’s Tropic Shop
18” x 15” x 9”
1954-1958

This small chest pictured above has the same sleek, unadorned, totally modern look that you would expect from one of Paul McCobb's designs. It is constructed of like materials and in a similar fashion to other pieces by Paul McCobb. It also uses exactly the same drawer-pull hardware as was used on Paul McCobb's Connoisseur Collection and Calvin Group for Directional.

By all outward appearances it would seem to be exactly what it appears to be, a small chest designed by Paul McCobb.

It’s only upon closer examination that this seemingly obvious Paul McCobb attribution starts to unravel.

For one thing there’s the construction of the chest itself: The chest is made up of two drawers, a single spaced top drawer and an oversize bottom drawer with a faux drawer face and double drawer hardware making it appear that there are three drawers where there are in fact only two.

McCobb himself would have probably had a fit hearing that anyone thought this chest of drawers was one of his designs (all reports say that he had an immense and very quick temper). His design aesthetic would have never allowed for a faux drawer face. The most basic rule of Paul McCobb’s design philosophy was: no ornamentation

There's also the slight issue of there not being one single photo or mention of this chest (or anything even remotely like it) in the exhaustive historical record that I have put together...

Hmpf!

So let’s ask the obvious question... “If it isn't by Paul McCobb then who made it?”

Investigating and learning in detail about those designers whose work is most similar and easily confused with McCobb's own I have put together ever expanding files on designers such as Clifford Pascoe, Milo Baughman, Kipp Stewart, and Arthur Umanoff, also companies such as Raymor, Selrite, and Furnette. Not as exhaustive perhaps as my main focus, Paul McCobb, but certainly in depth wherever possible. While doing this due diligence I stumbled upon the identity of the designer of these chests.

They are an obscure design by Arthur Umanoff from very early in his design career [1], sold through Peter du Jardin's Tropic Shop in New York from 1954 to 1958, the group consisted of very simple yet elegant cases in birch or walnut supported by 1/2" square wrought iron frames. Though other pieces from this group have withered into obscurity it seems that the #617, #618 and #620 designs (such as the one pictured about) flourished.

1954 NY Times advertisement for Peter du Jardin’s Tropic Shop.
This is the earliest known reference for these chests.

According to du Jardin's press the entire production run for this group consisted of 1036 pieces. With at least 14 designs in the group this averages out to 74 pieces of each of the known designs manufactured, possibly less, which accounts for their scarcity in the antiques marketplace. There just weren’t that many to start with... Personally I have only ever seen two other pieces from this group (barring the Jewelry Chests of which there are comparatively many) one of which is currently for sale on 1stdibs.com through Weinberg Modern (pictured below).

Arthur Umanoff designed #603 Cabinet Table
for Peter du Jardin’s Tropic Shop
19” x 15” x 29”
circa 1954

Linear Group Room Divider post updated

2010-10-28T08:58:00.005-04:00

The Linear Group Room Divider post has been updated to reflect new information about the construction and manufacture of these pieces. It seems likely now that Imperial Furniture made the initial production run (untagged and using hook eyes as a connection method for the shelves) and Calvin Furniture the remainder of the production (Calvin Furniture tag, aluminum center support across top shelf, aluminum tabs as connection method for the shelves).

"A Tale of Two Chairs" blogpost updated (again)

2010-10-22T20:43:00.003-04:00

Just added a modern color photo of the Planner Group 1535 chair in my own collection to the "A Tale of Two Chairs" article.

Calvin equals Paul McCobb?

2010-10-07T07:24:00.022-04:00

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.

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.

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

"A Tale of Two Chairs" blogpost updated

2010-09-24T08:23:00.006-04:00

Updated the A Tale of Two Chairs (or Clifford Pascoe vs. Paul McCobb) article with new larger and clearer images

The Daybed that Paul McCobb should have designed...

2010-09-20T18:53:00.027-04:00

I received a complete scan of the 1953 Modernmasters catalog yesterday courtesy of the Ball State University Library Drawing and Documents Archive. If you have been following the blog you will know of my interest in Clifford Pascoe and Modermasters as regards a chair Pascoe designed which is commonly mistaken for a similar chair by Paul McCobb (see A Tale of Two Chairs (or Clifford Pascoe vs. Paul McCobb)).

But there's more to it than that, in 1952/53 Pascoe designed an entire range of furniture in birch with wrought iron bases very much in the style of Paul McCobb's 1950/51 Planner Group collection. This Modernmasters collection included various McCobb influenced coffee, end and dining tables and also, as I discovered yesterday, a wrought iron based daybed (or Lounge Bed as it is referred to in the catalog). It was the Daybed that I was looking for.

I had long suspected that Pascoe might have had a Daybed in his collection for Modermasters but hadn't been able to find any tangible proof of it in the scant period references for Modernmasters I had managed to uncover in my research, that is until yesterday when I received the catalog scans, there it was plain as day on pages 13 and 15 of the 1953 Modernmasters Catalog (see below).

Clifford Pascoe designed SS4830 series Lounge Bed's for Modernmasters circa 1953

Scans courtesy of Ball State University Library Documents and Drawings Archive

You might ask why I was spending time trying to find information about a Modernmasters Daybed when the focus of this blog is Paul McCobb's work?

Looking at it in the photo above even I would think that this was a Paul McCobb design (and did the first time I saw one at a Brooklyn antique store). It's a gorgeous piece of furniture and it has every hallmark of the early wrought iron Planner Group designs. The problem was I could not find a single shred of information to back up the seemingly obvious Paul McCobb attribution.

After an extended period of looking for anything to directly tie this daybed to Paul McCobb I had to face the fact, regardless of my personal prejudice, that it possibly wasn't a Paul McCobb design after all.

I already knew about the Modernmasters wrought iron Paul McCobb lookalikes from my research into the Pascoe SD3710 chair mentioned earlier and figured that further research into Clifford Pascoe and Modernmasters might now be in order. So I dug in and went about finding every bit of information I could find.

This Pascoe research yielded some fascinating information. Of particular note is the fact that in 1940 Clifford Pascoe entered into a partnership with Alvar Aalto and that the resulting venture Artek-Pascoe produced from 1940-1947 such classic furniture designs as the Alvar Aalto bentwood stacking stool, also interesting to note is that a young Charles Eames worked for Artek during WWII designing splints out of molded plywood.

The thing that this second wave of Pascoe/Modernmasters research did not yield was proof of a daybed designed by Pascoe/Modernmasters.

It wasn't until a third foray into the Pascoe/Modernmasters field that I did find out, almost by accident, that Ball State University had a copy of the 1953 Modermasters Catalog in their Drawings and Documents archive. This was last July, and things being what they are it took a little while for a copy to finally make it's way into my hands for research.

So there we have it. I have to admit that I am more than a little disappointed to present this information here. Where in other cases I might have set my research goals to disprove a spurious attribution, here, I had hoped against hope that this daybed would prove not to be a Clifford Pascoe design and remain a mystery. Unfortunately wishful thinking is no substitute for effective research.

Reaction buttons

2010-09-04T14:16:00.004-04:00

Just created several reaction buttons for the bottoms of the blog posts

Like, Don’t Like, More Info, and More Like This

Are there any other buttons that you folks who are reading this blog would like to see? Let me know in the comments!

Timeline Corrections

2010-09-02T09:49:00.003-04:00

Several items on the timeline were incorrectly identified as being part of Paul McCobb’s work for Directional, fixed now.

1956 Linear Group 497 Coffee Table and 496 Room Divider manufactured by the Imperial Furniture Co. of Grand Rapids, MI

2010-08-13T08:31:00.021-04:00

1956 Linear Group Room Divider

If you are as familiar with Paul McCobb's work as I am you will know that these pieces are infrequently tagged with the familiar Calvin Furniture tags as are all of the other designs from the Linear Group. Most every example I have ever seen is unlabeled. This lack of a label bothered me from time to time, I just didn't understand why this particular piece would occasionally show up unlabeled.

Back in June I found the answer while going through the paperwork for a show that Paul McCobb did. I didn't realize at the time that I had found the answer, it was just another tidbit of information to go into the research archive for later consumption.

In 1958 Paul McCobb put together a show for the American Federation of Artists titled "Kaleidoscope - Changing aspects of American Design 1875 - 1960". The show was a traveling pictorial display detailing the evolution of American furniture towards Contemporary and was shown around the US and in Canada from 1959 to 1960.

In the paperwork for the show there is a entry on page 6 of the catalog list, the text, boxed in red, is quoted below the image:

"PAUL McCOBB - room divider linear group. Imperial

Furniture Co., Grand Rapids, Mich."

(Scan courtesy of American Federation of Arts.)

Referencing the very same untagged room divider I have sitting in my Living Room.

Never having heard of the Imperial Furniture Co. before and certainly never having heard of it in any relationship to Paul McCobb I did what any untrained, undisciplined, and disorganized researcher would do. I promptly forgot all about it.

More recently, while researching in the woodworking trade publications of the 1950's I came across an interesting article about the Bergsma Bros. (Julius and Kenneth), owners of the Calvin Furniture Co., who manufactured so much of Paul McCobb's 1950's output that the name Calvin Furniture has become almost synonymous with Paul McCobb. In the article it was mentioned that the Bergsma's had purchased Imperial Furniture Co. in 1955.

Now I wish I could say I had a sudden epiphany reading this, but the truth is I didn't. I scanned and filed the article and thought nothing more of it. (There are a LOT of articles in my research archive, several thousand in fact.) It wasn't until days later that I started thinking about the other Imperial Furniture Co. reference that I had collected. Finally the pieces settled into place!

Why doesn't this Linear Group room divider have a Calvin Tag? Because it wasn't manufactured by Calvin Furniture. It was manufactured by Calvin Furniture's sister company, Imperial Furniture, who never had a "designed by Paul McCobb" tag of their own.

Later production models manufactured by Calvin Furniture are tagged above the top shelf and have subtle though marked differences in their construction.

Timeline Moved

2010-08-12T23:41:00.003-04:00

Moved the timeline post to it's own page. Click on the tab above to easily get to the new timeline page.

1951 Directional Modern #1699 Corner Table

2010-08-08T04:49:00.007-04:00

1951 Directional Modern #1699 Corner Table

A true rarity!

A genuine Paul McCobb Directional Modern #1699 Corner Table by Furnwood Corp. of Brockton, MA circa 1951

To the best of my knowledge no pieces from this group have ever come to auction. There's almost no documentation whatsoever for this earliest of Paul McCobb's furniture designs barring a single reference on pg. 128 of William J. Hennessey's indispensable "Modern Furnishings for the Home" (reprinted by Acanthus Press in 1997) and an unattributed image of the table along with two early Paul McCobb chairs (also unattributed) in a photo depicting a new Karagheusian carpet in the March 1952 issue of Furniture Age pg. 44.

The legs and structure are solid Honduran Mahogany and the top is of Honduran Mahogany veneered Plywood which is unusual for Paul McCobb's designs as they were most frequently of hardwoods, veneered or solid.

The scale of it astonishes me, the table is 34" (l) x 34" (w) x 24" (h). Huge! Shown here in the Cordovan finish, it was also available in Paul McCobb's signature Sandrift, a custom finish developed by Sherwin Williams for Paul McCobb specific to his use of green toned Honduran Mahogany, a Black Lacquer finish was another option. It's interesting to note that the Sandrift finish predates the 1952 Irwin Collection where it is best known.

Timeline Addition and Change

2010-08-06T23:34:00.002-04:00

Added Daryl Products to 1962

Changed the 1962 Alside entry to reflect new information

Timeline Changes

2010-08-04T01:04:00.002-04:00

Moved Blair Series 690 Chairs from 1962 to 1961

Added Mutschler Series 800 Office Arrangements to 1961

Timeline Updated

2010-08-02T11:20:00.006-04:00

Added entries for a carpet that Paul McCobb designed for Edward Fields in 1959 and an entry for Alside Inc. a manufacturer of Prefab Aluminum Houses starting in 1962.

Wow!

2010-08-01T03:51:00.011-04:00

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

Globes Revisited

2010-07-28T06:56:00.020-04:00

When I started researching the globes I was operating under the basic assumption that the date of the globes was appropriate to the period in which Paul McCobb might have likely designed them, which is to say 1952 to 1959. Later I learned this assumption was inherently flawed as further research and study revealed that the globes were in fact produced in the 1970's.

The problem this presented is that when I contacted Replogle to ask them about it I specifically asked them about their production during the 50’s, 1950 to 1959! To which they replied that they had not manufactured anything of the sort in that time period. With that answer in hand I believed I had reached a dead end in this line of enquiry. I despaired of ever finding who manufactured these globes.

A year ago when I started on this line of research it had never occurred to me that the timeline estimate could possibly have been quite so wrong and misleading. It was only recently after revisiting my notes on the globes that I decided to date them myself using the information Replogle provides for doing so. After doing this the truth of the matter became readily apparent, as I have already written about in a previous blog post.

Early this AM the final piece of the puzzle fell into place, it came to me that I had never inquired about their production in the 70’s! I never asked the question because I had foolishly trusted in the general competence of the questionable Paul McCobb attribution to have gotten the year right if not the specifics as to designer and/or manufacturer.

A quick google books search for Replogle Globe without the limiting factor of only searching between the years 1950 and 1959 told the tale and yielded this clipping from the November 1977 issue of the Texas Monthly page 180 which very clearly gives us all of the information necessary to finally debunk the fallacy of the Paul McCobb Globe.

"GLOBE ON BRASS STAND

- 3' tall 16" dia. globe.

Replogle Globe, Inc. World Classic Series -

Leroy M. Tolman, Cartographer . . .$199."

There it is in black and white, mystery solved! It is indeed a 1970’s Replogle design. In fact variations on this Replogle design persisted from the mid 70’s all the way through to the early 90’s. A version of it in wrought iron, The Eclipse Globe (now discontinued), was manufactured until very recently and can still be purchased from several vendors.

A word about updates

2010-06-29T19:10:00.005-04:00

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

2010-06-23T08:30:00.019-04:00

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 correct attribution while interviewing a former Raymor designer last year. After describing the Wine Racks to him in some detail (it was a phone interview) he said “Arthur was doing stuff like that with the Butcher Block and the Leather”. As I questioned him further we were able to establish that “Arthur" was in fact Arthur Umanoff and that the company he thought likely to have produced these pieces was Shaver Howard, one of the Raymor concerns, but he couldn’t remember what years they might have been produced beyond suggesting late 60’s early 70’s as that was the time that he himself worked as a designer for Raymor.

So now I had an idea of where to look and what to look for. Unfortunately other things kept pushing this project off to the side. A few abortive attempts at searching out Arthur Umanoff had yielded some suggestive information from the late 60’s showing markedly similar designs for Shaver Howard but nothing with the signature leather straps.

When next I had the opportunity to try searching out this information I had better luck. Searching Shaver Howard turned out to be the charm as there were a limited number of articles in the ProQuest Historical Newspapers database I was able to finally find an image of one of the leather and wrought iron wine racks clearly attributed to Shaver Howard in an ad in the December 3, 1971 Issue of the LA Times (Below).

“Large wrought iron dome shaped wine rack holds 67 bottles. 75.00

Small 4-bottle in wrought iron and leather from Shaver Howard. At 10.00. In our Arts/Gifts.”

In the advertisement above from late 1971 we see an image one of the leather and wrought iron wine racks which gives us information establishing date of production and manufacturer. So that’s part of the puzzle, it pretty clearly establishes that these were not designed by Paul McCobb as they are produced several years after he died by a company he had no known affiliation with. Arthur Umanoff, however, had a long standing affiliation with Shaver Howard, as their designer, as seen in the article clippings below

Arthur Umanoff Etageré for Shaver Howard circa 1967

Arthur Umanoff Bar and Bar Stool for Shaver Howard circa 1967

Unfortunately the record I have been able to assemble is fragmentary, I have yet to uncover images of the larger wine racks in period ads or editorials, but I think that there is enough information here, to, in the very least, cast some serious doubts as to the veracity of anyone claiming that Paul McCobb designed these wrought iron and leather wine racks.

Addendum: Since writing this I have been in contact with Arthur Umanoff's daughter. She has most generously agreed to grant me access to her archive of materials related to her father's design career in the coming weeks. I am very excited to see this material and hope to be able to amend this post with better, more authoritative information once I have gone through the archive. Watch this space!

The case against the Globes

2010-06-09T09:29:00.008-04:00

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 there, no mention ever of any world globe designed by, or even closely associated with, Paul McCobb.

Having found nothing in the historical record to support the attribution of these globes I dug a little deeper. First I contacted Replogle, the company whose globes were used in these pieces. As it turns out Replogle is one of those rare companies which has A) Never been sold or changed hands B) Maintains an excellent historical record of their work and C) Is quite willing to answer any questions posed. Another great thing about Replogle is that they have a page on their website titled "How Old is Your Globe" which gives detailed information on how to date their World Globes.

Over the course of several e-mails and phone calls I was able to establish that Replogle had never contracted Paul McCobb to design globes, and did not sell globes to Paul McCobb, BG Mesberg National Sales, Directional, Calvin Furniture, H. Sacks & Sons, Winchendon Furniture, Northcraft Lighting, Excelsior Art Studio, or Bryce Originals, which is to say all of the known business entities and manufacturers who did any work in brass related to Paul McCobb's designs and who were likely to have made the stands had they truly been designed by Paul McCobb.

Furthermore, during a series of telephone interviews with Edward Mesberg, who worked for Directional in an executive capacity from the start of the company in 1950 until it was sold in 1994, I asked him about the globes. Mr. Mesberg stated that to his recollection Directional never manufactured or sold a world globe designed by Paul McCobb or anyone else.

Finally, an examination of the globes themselves. As I mentioned earlier there is a very good resource for dating Replogle Globes on their website. There are a multitude of these globes available for sale on 1stdibs.com, all with very good, large, clearly detailed photos. After a careful looking at all of the available photos on 1stdibs.com I was able to determine that in each and every case the Replogle Globes available there dated to 1972 or later.

Now let's add a few pertinent facts about Paul McCobb's life and career into the mix:

Paul McCobb's working relationship with Directional ended sometime in or around 1960.
The very last furniture group Paul McCobb designed was in 1965 for Paul McCobb Showrooms, after which, according to his daughter Melissa, his failing health prevented his continued working in this capacity.
Paul McCobb died of kidney failure in 1969.

Now if only one of the globes had dated to 1972, then there would be the very real possibility that the globe had been replaced due to damage or wear. However, having dated seven of these globes and all of them dating consistently there is only one remaining conclusion I can draw given the evidence at hand:

It does not seem possible that Paul McCobb designed these globes.

A Cautionary Tale: Researching the Paul McCobb lamp designs

2010-03-02T13:53:00.068-05:00

When I first became interested in Paul McCobb I did what everyone does nowadays. I looked it up on-line.

Having wasted a lot of time google’ing Paul McCobb and not really finding much of substance I realized I was going to have to do more than just search the Internet if I truly wished to learn the subject.

The problem with doing "research" on line is that no-one is editing the Internet. Anyone can publish anything in a webpage and no-one is checking their information. For instance: Do a Google search for "Paul McCobb lamp", and click on the very first link. This brings you to a very nicely designed and well thought out web page with examples of Paul McCobb furniture and lamps, it certainly looks official. The website is architonic.com which advertises itself as a “Reference data base for collectors of design objects”.

Before we go much further it’s important to mention something about the way that many websites gather their content; it’s called “aggregating”. Aggregating is gathering or copying information from other sources. It is a quick and easy way to put together a large amount of content in a short period of time. There is little or no editorial oversight. The prevalent thinking being that the responsibility for the editorial content is ultimately that of the content's creator. For Architonic.com their content is primarily aggregated from the online auction databases of auction houses such as LA Modern and Wright 20th Century.

Now let's take a closer look...

Of the two lamps depicted on the page I mentioned this one (below) taken from a LA Modern online auction catalog in 2004 is fairly well documented and can be found in the September 1951 issue of Furniture Forum as well as in William J Hennessey's excellent Modern Furnishings for the Home published in 1952.

Paul McCobb for Northcraft Lighting

The other (below), also from a 2004 LA Modern auction, kind of stumped me. I couldn't find a single historical reference to support the Paul McCobb attribution. But it had to be correct otherwise it wouldn’t be there, right?

Gerald Thurston for Lightolier

Coming back to it several times and looking at it closely, I found that this lamp just didn't fit with those lamps from Raymor, Northcraft Lighting and Excelsior Art Studio that I had been studying. It looked and felt wrong to me. I began to get the idea in the back of my mind that maybe it wasn’t a Paul McCobb design after all; maybe it's a mistake. But I could hardly claim superior knowledge without some cold hard facts to support my side. As I had nothing to support my assumption, I had to put this idea aside. So this attribution became another of a long list of issues that I hoped to deal with at some nebulous future time.

Time passed, my research progressed; as I became connected with more truly knowledgeable people in the field eventually another expert expressed his own doubts about the lamp to me. It felt good to know that I wasn't totally alone in my suspicion, this knowledge helped fuel my desire find a definitive answer.

Now much of my research involves, quite literally, flipping through old design magazines and periodicals, page by page, month by month, year by year, looking for information pertinent to the subject at hand. It is a time consuming, labor intensive and frequently very disheartening task.

It’s not all drudgery however; occasionally the effort pays off in surprising and unexpected ways. During a research trip to LA, and the private archives of Reform Gallery, in fall of 2009, exactly this happened. After days of flipping pages and dutifully scanning and logging articles and information pertinent to my Paul McCobb research Gerard (Gerard O'Brien the owner of Reform Gallery) found it; conclusive proof that this lamp and it's cousins were not designed by Paul McCobb at all, as had been previously suggested, but rather by Gerald Thurston for Lightolier (see below).

Interior Design August 1957, page 108

Interior Design August 1957, page 110

Having the answer I became interested in learning how this error had occurred, so I started looking into who had made the original attribution. After some digging it became fairly obvious that this attribution originated with the aforementioned 2004 LA Modern auction. I contacted Peter Loughrey, Director of LA Modern and learned the following:

Here I paraphrase: "In 2004 LA Modern was consigned this lamp to auction, time pressure, anticipated sales price and other factors limited the amount of research that they (the auction house) could devote to any one lot at auction, having little or no information to go on a determination was made based upon "look and feel", the catalog was published, the auction went off as planned.”

This erroneous information was then picked up by the auction and design aggregators (such as Architonic) where it was propagated into their online content and left there to be presented to the world.

LA Modern, upon learning of this new information, immediately took steps to correct their website and, I am told, informed their purchaser of the mistake.

But aggregators such as Architonic are not necessarily aware of changes to the original information. Attempts to contact Architonic to modify or edit this material on their website have received no reply as of the publishing of this article.

Finally here are a few pointers about Paul McCobb lamp design:

The lamps do not look like the furniture by Irwin/Calvin; there are absolutely none that use 1/2" square brass tubing.
As of this writing there are no known ceramic lamps Update 6-29-2010: have now confirmed existence of one ceramic lamp designed for Raymor in 1948 it is not a classic ceramic form lamp base however.
Calvin Furniture never made lamps for Paul McCobb, anyone claiming a lamp to be by Calvin is not knowledgeable in the field and the quality of their attribution might be called into question.
The brass floor lamps by Excelsior Art Studio always have little pills at the ends of their feet, anything without this detail is not a Paul McCobb/Excelsior Art Studio lamp (see picture below)
With the exception of some of the earliest lamp designs for Raymor. Paul McCobb lamps do not use lamp harps to hold the shades but rather have a glass or plastic conical reflector/diffuser on which a lampshade would sit.

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

2010-02-15T22:36:00.049-05:00

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 to the #1531 wooden side chair which sold at that time for $17.95. The #1535 side chair was not in production for very long, and was phased out of the Planner Group by 1953.

Examples of this chair are really very hard to come by today, they are comparatively rare by virtue of their high initial cost and short period of production. When they do show up they are quickly snapped up to be placed into private collections never to be seen again.

So how the heck did it become such an icon?

Part of the answer is misattribution.

In late 1951 a remarkably similar (and substantially cheaper) chair designed by Clifford Pascoe for Modernmasters Inc. was introduced to the market, this chair was included in the 1952 Museum of Modern Art Good Design show.

Modernmasters Desk and Chair from the 1952/53 Modernmasters Catalog page 23.

Modernmasters SD3710 & SD3810 taken from the 1952/53 Modernmasters Catalog page 5

Modernmasters Scans Courtesy of the Ball State University Library Drawings and Documents Archive

Modernmasters Inc. was a curious company selling derivative furniture designs both through furniture stores and also mail order through ads in magazines such as House & Garden, House Beautiful, etc...

This Pascoe designed chair initially sold for $19.95, as time went on the price gradually reduced, first to $14.95, then $12.95 and finally as low as $8.95 apiece in 1963. It was quite a good looking chair (as was it's distant cousin the #1535 McCobb chair) and obviously very popular considering the duration of the production run and the number still around today.

How do you tell them apart? Here's a list of the major differences:

Paul McCobb chair has a metal stretcher across the bottom between the front and rear legs (see images above), the Pascoe chair does not have this.
Clifford Pascoe chair incorporates an upholstered foam rubber seat, the Paul McCobb chair a carved wooden seat.
Where the Pascoe chair uses bolts through the back of the backrest to attach it to the iron uprights, the McCobb backrest is connected invisibly at the bottom of the backrest.
The McCobb backrest is more sculptural and less angular than the Pascoe backrest.

Those are your major identifying points. Don't be fooled by cheap imitations! Take it from one who knows...

Special thanks go to Scott Lindberg over at Silab Studios for the improved title.

There's that damn moveable magazine rack again!

2010-02-08T22:00:00.018-05:00

Here's a puzzling little oddity that has come up in my research.

In this clipping from Furniture Retailer and Furniture Age, October 10, 1956 we see the first appearance of a moveable magazine rack designed by Paul McCobb.

For the longest time I thought it was a one off made exclusively for the American Rayon Institute room until I came across this Photo in Look Magazine.

Look Magazine's December 23, 1958 p. 80

"book tree" (below, left), shown with it's creator

furniture designer Paul McCobb, will soon go

into production. It was designed by McCobb "for

the man who likes to read on the run."

And then again in House & Garden's, January 1959 "Forecast 1959" page.

So what ever happened to it? Did it ever actually go into production? If so, who would the manufacturer have been, and how many (if any) were sold?

Have you seen this book rack?

A slight obsession

2010-02-06T23:17:00.010-05:00

Over the past 8 months I have been independently researching Paul McCobb's life and designs. At first just for my own personal edification, and then, as the breadth and scope of the task revealed itself, with the intention of publishing a Catalogues Raisonnés of Paul McCobb's work.

I have had help along the way from other Paul McCobb enthusiasts, most notably from Gerard O'Brien at Reform Gallery in Los Angeles and Mark Naylon at Modern Living Supplies in New York, both of whom are avid Paul McCobb collectors, who have graciously allowed me access to their invaluable personal collections in support of my research efforts.

The task is not an inconsiderable one. Paul McCobb was active as a designer for 20 years, with much of his earlier and later work either forgotten, or, in the very least, not commonly known and poorly documented.

Besides the comparatively well known furniture collections Paul McCobb also turned his hand to designing Lamps, Textiles, Mirrors, Tiles, Ceramics, Radios, TV's, Stereo Systems, Glassware and Tableware, all of which I intend to include in the final published work.

Newspaper and magazine articles culled from research archives and libraries have been an invaluable aid in reconstructing the career of this remarkable man, as have the various Paul McCobb related furniture catalogs that I have been able to acquire in the course of my research.

Inevitably there are holes in my information, catalogs which I now know existed that I haven't been able to find copies of. Many of these missing catalogs aren't quite so important as the material is covered in other overlapping resources. Some however, would be invaluable to me and my efforts should they come to light, particularly those early pamphlets detailing the little known groups by Paul McCobb for Directional prior to 1952 or catalogs of his later period work for Mutschler, Lane, and Widdicomb. If anyone reading this should know of this material please contact me, any help is appreciated.

Along with this blog in the weeks ahead I will also be working on expanding the existing Wikipedia entry on Paul McCobb and (possibly vainly) attempting to correct common misattributions in otherwise respectable internet resources.