One of the most iconic object of the mid-century era is undoubtedly the Marshmallow sofa designed by the George Nelson’s office in the late 50s.

When it first appeared ln 1956 the bold outline, easy-to-clean surfaces and see-through structure of the Marshmallow could hardly have contrasted more sharply with the heavily upholstered, dust-gathering bulky sofas that dominated so many living rooms of the period.

Bright in colour, playful ln shape and name and somewhat resembling a wide-open waffle-iron, the Marshmallow seemed already to be looking forward to the coming Pop era. With its round balls of colour held together as if by a molecular structure, it also relates to George Nelson’s earlier design for a Ball Wall Clock (1947) or to Charles and Ray Eames’s Hang-lt-All Coat Rack (1953).

Contrarily to what many people think, the Marshmallow was not designed by George Nelson in himself but by one of the members of his office: Irving Harper staff designer from almost two decades and George Nelson Associates. Like many mid-century designers, also Harper was interested in exploring the potentials of the new biomorphic and organic design style that already Charles Eames, Eero Saarinen, Alvar Aalto, Finn Juhl and many others were experimenting. Harper realized that the post war technologies and new materials available create a new style that -despite his scepticism about the ’stylization’ of the modern machine-age aesthetic- he had accept and cope with.

The main Harper’s concerns during the design process, were the outline and the light weight of the sofa, despite this the Marhsmallow was designed to fit in different kind of environments from public spaces to bourgeois living rooms.

Its cushions could be swapped to give a new look to it that together with the large variety of colours and formats available made the Marshamallow highly customizable but also a production labour-intensive.

Mid-Century designers and their works influenced the interiors of the last five decades. If you want to learn all about it, check Mid Century Home now!

If one were to hear the word ‘tribal cross tattoo’ the very first time, the image that would come to his mind is that their of a traditional outdated pattern. But usually this is simply not the case, with these tattoos most attractive to buyers in the world of tattoos at present. Men and women seek these tattoos owing to their unique artistic pattern and magnetic appeal.

Getting into the details, the tribal tats for men are usually broad and comparatively big in size. Girls prefer these tattoos on areas such as neck and ankle, thus providing enough room only for a small tattoo. The Celtic cross tattoos which is one of the oldest forms of cross tattoo is combined with the tribal tattoo producing the most effective tattoo forms at present, the tribal butterfly tattoos. Wavering from the well known fact that the tribal cross tats are usually done in black ink, other colors like red, green, blue and purple are used.

Also the tattoo artists at present utilize designs other than the usual spirals and knots used in the conventional tribal tats. The usage of flowers with the usual style and design makes it suitable for the lower back and the love handles of a woman. The much wanted glamorous look is thus obtained. Also, using fairies inked in such away that there’s symmetry on either sides of the cross creates a great impact. The added advantage lies in the truth that as fairies can be closely associated with the cross, they make the theme of the tattoo more meaningful.

Among the various designs available, a choice of the right style for the individual depends on his character, preference and what he wants to showcase. For the women who like to flaunt their beauty, the designs suitable are floral tribal cross tattoo and angel winged tribal cross tattoo. The several other designs that may be incorporated with the cross are animals, birds and leaves which add more beauty to the conventional tribal cross.

The essence of tribal cross tattoo lies in the truth that it not only serves the intention of exhibiting one’s respect and sense of belongingness to a particular ethnicity, but also is a visual representation of the history of the clan which the tattoo represents.

Find more about cross tattoos and tribal cross tattoos

Within the many designers that contributed to the mid-century modern design success, Charles and ray Eames had a special place for sure. They designed almost all kind of objects possible, but within all of them the ESU(Eames Storage Unit) is for sure one of the most popular. The Eameses’ designed the ESU -in the 1949 for Herman Miller- to be a flexible and innovative piece of furniture: the first combinable furniture available in many variations and materials.

The ESU’s structure is made of original vertical and horizontal parts like the steel vertical bars forming the L-Shape -in different lenghts- the horizontal shelves in lacquered plywood and, again, vertical elements forming backs and sliding doors in different materials like plywood, perforated metal and Masonite.

The single parts come in many different finishes and colours including sliding doors, open-back wire, X-frame braces and three-drawer systems. All these elements could be assembled obtaining an highly customized furniture, a kit of mass-producible and interchangeable parts basing on the end user’s needs.

Charles and Ray Eames designed the ESU in the 1949 and produced by Herman Miller between the 1950 and 1955. From the 1998 is again in production. The ESU, despite its innovative characteristics, didn’t have the hoped commercial success. It was probably too modern for that time’s customers still too used in to the handmade style furniture.

The importance of the ESU was to become an example and a trend for the storage units production and design from that moment on. It best represented the Eameses’ philosophy in terms of solving interior decor problems in an innovative and functional way and remembers other classic Eameses’ projects like the Wire Chair and the Wire-base Tables.

Mid-Century has been one of the most creative age for design that influenced interior decors of the following decades. If you want to learn all about it, check Mid Century Home now!

If you like to go buying for second hand stores or furniture consignment stores, you almost certainly know how different they could be. To begin, I would like to point out the main differences concerning the two sort of stores:

In the consignment stores you bring the objects you need to sell and they place them on sale for you. When they are sold, they pay out you a proceed from the final sale. Whenever after a while the object is not gone yet, they discount it.

Thrift stores, instead, are ran by nonprofit charities organizations. You bring the goods you wish to donate to the store and it sells them keeping all the profit. Typically you can actually discuss a lower price but it’s nonprofit…I never do it. This is basically how all the consignment and thrift stores work.

Talking about vintage furniture, I personally like the furniture consignment stores to look for awesome retro pieces; you could really get nice good buys there. The actual reason why it could be easier to get big piece of furniture in a consignment store? The answer is that the massive furniture have to have to be delivered to the store and not most people have got a van. That’s precisely why consignment stores give you a transport service specially for furniture and -as all the transportation services- they quite possibly have fixed days to collect the goods. This implies that they furthermore have fixed days to show the furniture in the store! The way you can have more chances to buy the affordable retro furniture you are interested in is to know in which days they display the new arrivals.

I found out two methods to do it:

Being friendly with the team members: Becoming friends with the store staff members makes sure you to be aware of when they show the newest arrivals and consequently to learn the best days to go; being sure to come across new furniture and perhaps what you are in search of as well. This, also, signifies that you may have to stop at the store very often and if you don’t have time it might be a problem. So here we get to point two!

Subscribing the Newsletter: The big consignment stores have a newsletter about the newest arrivals in the shop and the special deals. This is an awesome way to be up to date without having to check the store on a regular basis. The issue is that you’ll share this info with all the customers that subscribed the newsletter too. Also, the newsletters are sent out few days later the actual arrival of the furniture in the store. Then, it might be too late to find that retro economical living room furniture you were trying to find. If you see anything yo love, you’ve to be super quick!

If you are interested in Mid-Century Modern design and retro furniture, check out now Mid Century Home and the guide on How To Save Money Whlie You’re Shopping.

As I said before, the mid-century glass often had a sculptural look even if designed to be daily objects like table-wares, paperweights, platters and so on.

From the late 20s on designers started to replace craftsmen -becoming authentic glass artists- and companies to create separate lines of vases depending on their final use -like wine glasses and tumblers- with separate departments for the art glass. Particularly during the 50s the distinction between art glass works and common products become subtle with the swirling colours and uncommon forms adopted in functional designs as well.

Paolo Venini was a Venetian glass-maker who had begun exploring the artistic potential of glass in 1921. His company in Murano became the leading Italian glass manufacturer, and he encouraged collaborations between artists and designers. Venini was celebrated for his unpredictable, asymmetrical forms and the sculptural dimension he pioneered in glass, contributing to the renaissance of Murano glass in the 1950s.

One of his friendly rivals was Dino Martens, who had a penchant for turning functional designs into sculptural objects that transcendent function altogether. Aldo Nason brought dynamism to Murano at a time when the industry had been criticized for becoming stagnant. His sculptural shapes were often inspired by organic forms, and his designs contrasted with the more subdued, elegant styles that had typified Murano during the pre-war era. Nason was inspired by shapes such as hallow tree truncks and fossilized teeth, which he adorned with a rainbow of candy-coloured motifs.

Although their palettes were seldom as vibrant as the Italians’, Scandinavian designers experimented with the effects of original colour pigments and the use of different additives in glass. At Orrefors, one of Sweden’s most esteemed glass-works, the creative focus throughout the 1950s was directed by young designers like Sven Palmqvist. He begun to exploit the potential of coloured glass in the 1930s. In the late 1940s and 50s, inspired by the rich colours and patterns of Byzantine mosaics, he produced the Ravenna ranges, in which a mosaic effect was created by floating pieces of coloured glass within the vessels’ dense walls.

In Finland the 1950s is remembered as a golden decade for the country’s glass. Award-winning designers such as Tapio Wirkkala and TImo Sarpaneva, both based at Iittala, created several ranges of elegant and forward-thinking designs, Wirkkala produced a large body of work based on jagged ice blocks, lichen vessels and mushroom shapes, while his Tapio range of clear glassware(1954) captured the lightness and transparency of air, trapping an air bubble within each dense stem. Sarpaneva’s work moved from functional efficiency to superfluous luxury and back again. During the mid-1950s he brought a sculptural approach his i-Glass range of utility glassware, produced in smoky colours with a subtle metallic tint that caught the eye of other designers, creating one of the signature colour palettes of the 1950s.

The mid-century modern design is the most inspiring era of design. Many of the most important furniture and object were designed during those years. If you are looking for the best source of information about mid-century, don’t forget to check Mid Century Home now!

The Arne Jacobsen’s egg chair, so-named because of its resemblance to a smoothly broken eggshell, is the modified,mid-century modern version of the Georgian wing armchair that offers a variety of seating positions and a protective cocoon to anyone who sits in it.

Together with the Swan Chair, the Egg was designed by Jacobsen to decorate the first design hotel in history -that he was building- in Copenhagen: the Royal SAS Hotel. The Swan and Egg chair were conceived to welcome the guests in the lobby and guest rooms like they were ‘warm hugs’ following the typical organic mid-century shapes.

It is not often recognized that in this work Jacobsen owed an enormous debt to the Norwegian designer Henry Klein. Klein was a pioneer in the development of furniture made from shaped plastic shells and held key patent rights for the moulding process he had developed and that was used under license by Jacobsen’s manufacturer Fritz Hansen.

In addition, Klein designed the chair Model 1007 in 1956 that had too many similarities with the future Egg chair to imagine that Jacobsen was not aware of it. However -in the designing process of the Egg chair- Jacobsen made a full use of the moulding process potentials achieving a much higher quality level for his product.

But what is most impressive about Jacobsen’s work is his clever fusion of several functionally distinct components of the Egg Chair -notably the seat, the back and the armrest- into a clearly unified aesthetic whole, covered in either leather or fabric.The labour intensive and skilled hand-tailoring that is required to fix the covering to the frame means that only six or seven chairs were produced per week, even today.

The Egg chair become immediately an icon. Perhaps because it was designed for the first design Hotel in the world or because it was in Copenhagen, the Egg chair -after more than fifty years- still has a futuristic allure and a contemporary look.

During the Mid-Century modern era designers like Arne Jacobsen, Charles Eames and Finn Juhl, created most of the design icons of the twentieth century. If you want to discover everything about this amazingly creative age of design, check Mid Century Home now!

So, you’ve got a few nice looking photographs that you need to frame but you’re not sure how to go about carrying it out. Certainly, there are plenty of photograph frames available on the market at this time, but choosing the ideal one can be challenging sometimes. Lots of people go for making their own wood image frames given that they’re very easy to produce. Making your own wooden photo frame is also an excellent idea if you wish to reduce your cost, especially in this tough economy where every penny is important. Keep reading if you want to learn how to make your own!

The initial step is, obviously, to figure out the exact proportions. This step is simple and you can easily use the photograph in order to figure out the proper measurements for the body. After you have your dimensions, you’ll want to choose the photograph molding. You can find several ways to obtain a quality photo framework molding. As an guidance, it is better to go to the bigger art stores or craft stores since they generally have better solutions. You can also find a few forms of molding at home enhancement shops.

Now that you feature your proportions accomplished, you are able to go about selecting the framing materials! Be certainly to buy the right amount of framing materials, probably even a little more if you’re a total starter. Despite the fact that this project doesn’t require any wooden working encounter, lots of people still screw up during the cutting procedure. Cut the molding into 4 separate pieces utilizing a handsaw. Remember that a molding piece requires to include twice the wooden width.

As soon as the molding was cut, that you need to cut each individual piece again so that they feature a 45-degree position. This is accomplished safely using a handsaw and a mitre box! Given that you have all of the framework pieces, you are able to lay them on a flat working surface and arrange them. Make certainly to use top quality wooden glue as well as corner clamps for the frame edges. The wood glue should be applied on the edges after which you should press together the items.

Make certainly you allow the framework adequate time to dry out properly. You can also stain it or sand it after it’s dry. The last thing that you have to do now is to attach the ultimate, hanging part. As you can notice, producing your personal wood photograph frame is very simple and cost efficient!

You could obtain other informations on how to make a picture frame from wood on the how make a picture frame site.

The most remarkable furnishings from the mid-century at the time represented simply 5 percent among all furnishings offered. Even though the furniture industry was decentralized throughout the country, a high percentage came out of the main furniture production area, the Grand Rapids, Michigan.The sales of modern home furniture were mainly concentrated in the Northeastern havens of sophistication, but as California developed in the 1950s modern furnishings had immediate, widespread fortune there.

in 1957, home furniture sales and profits in California reached and led those of New York. Californian contribution to the good design movement was substantial, from hallowed name of Eames to Paul Laszlo, Paul Tuttle, Kipp Stuart and others. In addition to the success of mass-manufactured products in California and the New York area, enthusiastic buyers held their preferred designers, bringing into existence countless unique products, interesting not only for their rarity but for the striking originality of their designs.

CHARLES AND RAY EAMES Charles Eames is the indisputable shining light of twentieth-century American household furniture design. Ray Kaiser Eames, his wife and co-worker, has been always in the shadow. She never really minded: “Charles was a genius” she said, “I could never have done it myself.” Although neither could possibly he. The two worked together from 1940 till Charles death in 1978, from the first experiments with the plywood molding to the last project for Herman Miller, a sofa placed into production only in 1984.

The start up point of lots of their ideas was frequently a friend’s asking for a particular piece of furniture. ‘That’s the way things usually happened’ Ray Eames remembered ‘Someone be would having a baby and needed a rocking chair, so we would design one. The aluminium group come about as a result of a friend’s request for indoor/outdoor furniture. There was never a chance to think, what shall we do next? One thing lead to another. There was always something that needed doing, a hole that needed filling’.

Starting from a friend’s need, then, were born many of the most succesfull Eameses’ mid-century furniture. The Eameses’ always had in front the goal to create an object with an efficient mass-production system. Ray Eames stated: ‘We wanted to get as much quality as possible into mass production so that more people could live with well-made things’. That’s why the Eameses’ works characterized the mid-century interiors as well as the ones of many decades later.

GEORGE NELSON George Nelson was the design department director of Heman Milller, the furniture company who manufactured the all Eameses’ products during the mid-century. He started his career writing about architecture -he was an architect himself- moving later to the furniture manufacturing business in Herman Miller. One of his most important and famous products come in late 1940s when he invented the Storagewall; a flexible system of case pieces mounted on aluminium poles to assuage the pet peeve of the home front: lack of closet space. Next come the Basic Cabinet Series, introduced in 1947, with rectilinear components arrayed on supporting benches. After a decade of refinements, the BCS involved more complex units, which were available in four finishes with satin chrome or porcelain pulls, and triangular aluminium or 7-inch legs.

Mid-Century has been one of the most creative era for design influencing the interiors of the following decades. If you want to discover more about it, check Mid Century Home now!

One of the main characteristics of the Scandinavian mid-century design was the organic forms of its furniture and objects. Probably one of the most popular organic object is the Alvar Aalto’s Savoy vase. Even if Aalto used organic forms many times for his furniture and architectural works, there have been several speculations about the origin of the vase’s shape: the trees shape, the water waves, Finland’s lakes.

Although the vase has become so famous that it can now stand as a symbol for the whole of Finland, this suggestion, like all the rest, is ultimately fanciul, even if it does accord with a nationalism that was an important feature of much finnish design.

Aalto never said a word about what exactly inspired the vase’s design and probably is one of the few cases when Aalto designed an object more for his own interest and for a purely decorative reason, even though the vase is clearly functional.

Definitely, once empty, the Savoy has the appeal of a sculpture.The shape remembers the organic curves of the most famous Aalto’s laminated wooden furniture and constitutes a distinctive element of his works as designer and architect.

The vase was created for a competition for glass designs at the Paris World Fair of 1937, sponsored by the manufacturer Karhula (later Iittala). It won first prize. But at more or less the same time several were ordered to complete Aalto’s furnishings of the Savoy restaurant in Helsinki, which is where it its name comes from.

Since the Beginning the vase was produced in many different colours and sizes and still extremely successful after more then 70 years from its first appearance. Designed during the early years of what later would be called ‘mid-century era’, the Savoy vase looks still contemporary after more than seventy years

The mid-century modern design is the most inspiring era of design. Many of the most important furniture and object were designed during those years. If you want to discover more about mid-century, check now Mid Century Home!

Even though a lot of us will likely never afford to possess such an extravagant place, a lot of of us find a certain degree of pleasure in studying and talking close to them. Lots of of the most expensive residences will feature very bold and exciting styles, particularly the more contemporary ones! We’ve produced a list of the top 5 most expensive homes in the world:

5. Three Ponds, New York ($75,000,000). This place even has its own 18-holes golf course. The more include “Three Ponds” comes from the fact that you will find 3 wetlands in the region (very well-kept, needless to say, with lots of fish). There’s also 14 amazing and distinctive gardens on the property!

4. Donald Trump Palace, New York ($125,000,000). The more Trump Palace is, in fact, just about the most well-known buildings in the world at the moment. The whole construction features eighteen high-class bedrooms. Mr. Trump is extremely proud around his household and he considers the nearby neighborhood as “the richest community on earth”.

3. Updown Court, United Kingdom ($140,000,000). The more Updown Court features definitely seen much better days; it is at this kind of time empty due to its extremely high upkeep price tag. Many people aren’t very fond with the location either! The more estate features an underground car port and twenty-four bedrooms. Running this house is amazingly expensive (about $500,000 per month)!

2. Ira Rennert Mansion, New York ($180,000,000). This is an additional well-known place around the world. Its very own proprietor, Ira Rennert, is an surprisingly productive American businessman and buyer. This particular house is considered the biggest one in all the region of The USA! The more Ira Rennert Mansion has 39 bathrooms, twenty nine sleeping rooms, multiple sport courts and a bowling street.

1. The Villa La Leopolda, France ($398,350,000). The Villa La Leopolda is like well-known for being owned by Bill Gates. Its own current proprietor is like Roman Abramovich, a Russian business person that also owns Millhouse LLC (a private investment company). The more estate is certainly one of one of the most amazing within the world at the more moment.

You’ll find, needless to say, other well-known overpriced residences inside the world that are worth mentioning in the following paragraphs. We are able to increase our little list the following: Maison de l’Amitie, Fleur de Lys, Dracula’s Castle, Hala Ranch, Aaron Spelling’s Manor, the more Penthouses at One Hyde Park, Elena Franchuk’s Victorian Villa, William Randolph Hearst’s Mansion and Antilla. One can simply picture the huge costs which are necessary to correctly preserve one of just around the more most overpriced properties in the world!

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