{"id":3565,"date":"2024-10-23T10:00:36","date_gmt":"2024-10-23T10:00:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/coinpop.me\/?p=3565"},"modified":"2024-10-28T11:45:39","modified_gmt":"2024-10-28T11:45:39","slug":"i-love-mid-century-modern-but-it-makes-me-sad","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/coinpop.me\/index.php\/2024\/10\/23\/i-love-mid-century-modern-but-it-makes-me-sad\/","title":{"rendered":"“I love mid-century modern but it makes me sad”"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Mid-century modern design<\/a> may meet our needs even more now than when it first appeared, but that doesn’t mean we should idolise the style, writes John Jervis.<\/span><\/p>\n

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I love mid-century modern, but it makes me sad.<\/strong> In its beauty and simplicity, it speaks of postwar optimism, and a belief in a better world \u2013 one of prosperity and peace, with large homes and larger pay packets. It’s not the fault of a bunch of attractive designs that this proved to be a mirage, even a fraud. But mid-century modern was wrapped up in that delusion, even contributed to it. And the design industry enjoyed, and continues to enjoy, the ride just a little too much.<\/p>\n

In the 1950s, mid-century modern design promised a lifestyle free from markers of wealth and privilege, free of decorative excess, of clutter and dirt, free from the past. In reality, there were few progressive ideals involved. Before the war, modernist designers had struggled to bring their ideas to mass production, but still sought to raise living standards in cities, designing ‘minimum dwellings’ with floorplans, kitchens and furnishings calculated to maximize space and improve lives.<\/p>\n

Their postwar successors \u2013 all those heroic, big-name designers we celebrate as prophets of a modern, democratic future \u2013 turned out to be less public-spirited. When mass production of modernist designs became a reality, they chose lucrative careers working, almost exclusively, for high-end manufacturers.<\/p>\n

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Then, as now, class was deeply embedded in design’s power<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

And those manufacturers rarely considered, pursued or achieved affordability or accessibility, and still don’t. There may well be perfectly justifiable arguments \u2013 and realities \u2013 around balancing profitability, quality and investment, and achieving sustainability. Yet it is fair to say that most such companies have never sought a mass consumer market \u2013 the sort of market that would erode the cachet and returns of their intellectual property. Then, as now, class was deeply embedded in design’s power, even as its pioneers proclaimed the advent of a classless era.<\/p>\n

To be fair, that worked both ways. The golden age of mid-century modern design barely stretches a couple of decades, partly because it was never that popular. Even when incomes grew, and aspirational furnishings became just about affordable, most consumers turned not to sanctioned ‘good design’, but to products with other, perhaps more important, meanings \u2013 nostalgia, craft, ornament, community, warmth.<\/p>\n

To the despair of critics, heavy ‘baroque’ furniture remained the preferred choice of consumers during the German economic miracle, while Americans showed a similar predilection for colonial styles. In the heyday of the Italian furniture industry, many manufacturers stuck to an aesthetic decried by Domus editor Ernesto Rogers as ‘Cantu Chippendale’.<\/p>\n