Planner, Perimeter, Predictor, Paul McCobb

Los Angeles Antiques Show 2011 , a set on Flickr.

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.  McCo...

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...

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!

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.

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

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.