Planner, Perimeter, Predictor, Paul McCobb

It's important to realize that time does not stand still. For a designer this means that design ideas change, new approaches are tried, new materials become popular/available, in general - things move on. Paul McCobb was no different from any other designer in this regard, his designs changed over time and his design work in the 60's was really very different from where he started in the late 40's/early 50's. Some time around 1960 Paul McCobb and Directional broke the ties that had bound them together and each went their separate ways. Paul McCobb, now a free agent for the first time in a decade, was at first unsure how he was going to proceed (according to interviews with friends and relations) but soon enough opportunities presented themselves, amongst these new opportunities was the chance to design a group of office seating for Blair Aluminum Furniture. This new group of office chairs was very synergistic with the continuing design work McCobb was doing with th...

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...) a...