Incollect Magazine - Issue 4

Issue 4 126 www.incollect.com has changed hands.” But he still feels McArthur has never really received full recognition for his designs. “McArthur was the Cadillac/Rolls Royce of US Aircraft seating and his significance in that arena can not be overstated,” Brown says, adding his designs for aircraft seating were used by the US Airforce and helped win WWII. Converso has a pair of McArthur’s signature sofas, Model 915, made of anodized aluminum, with machine-pressed aluminum fittings that have been reupholstered with a new cotton-linen fabric. Dating from the period 1920–1949, they are one of several classic pieces by McArthur Converso has handled. “He made really spectacular stuff,” Lawrence Converso says. ‘If people knew how sturdy it is and how light it is, it would be a revelation.” Converso had a set of ten dining chairs that he just sold to a collector in London. “These are special pieces, and those are always desirable.” “The whole early modernist design movement was a moment, an interesting moment in American history,” Converso says, adding that there are still many great examples by period designers to be found on the market. Glen Leroux Antiques, in Westport, Conn., has an iconic Gilbert Rohde streamline sideboard from 1936, with a stepped-up top, burled doors, circular cut-out and brushed steel pulls. TFTM has cabinets by Gilbert Rohde for Herman Miller, including a Streamline Art Deco cabinet from 1933, as well as an iconic airline chair designed by Kem Weber for Disney Studios and a black lacquered sideboard by Walter Dorwin Teague with streamline hardware. Lobel considers Rohde the most successful and aesthetically pleasing designer of the period. “His pieces are subdued enough they can be worked into any interior,” he says. “I’ve sold quite a few and currently have some more.” Rohde popularized the use of Lucite, using it specifically for cabinet pulls which, for Lobel, makes him modern but also contemporary and therefore relevant to current interior designers. “Lucite is still considered a cool material and the idea that Rohde was using it in the 1930s and 40s shows how forward-thinking he was.” Jake Baer, CEO of Newel in New York, agrees with Lobel about the forward-thinking nature of American modernist design. “This stuff was completely new, nobody had seen anything like it,” he says. “The design was so ahead of its time, even today is ahead of its time, for it was truly innovative.” Baer is increasingly approached to loan signature modernist American furniture for movie and television shows, especially anything set in the future. “The fact they want to use design from the 1930s and 1940s proves to me it has this constant lasting appeal.” Baer has witnessed renewed market interest, he says, in designers from this period, especially among young people. “This is one of our stronger categories because it has these futuristic vibes to it. Young people want to live in the future and a lot of the designs stay true to that look, being forward-looking and futuristic — they make their own rules, blending together ideas of the future, technology and art.” A very American Modernist point of view, indeed. A set of six dining chairs by Gilbert Rohde for Herman Miller. Model 3966, originally designed in 1939, in solid birchwood with original upholstery, from Converso.