Planner, Perimeter, Predictor, Paul McCobb

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!

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

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 “aggregati...