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Mid-Century Finds from Sam Kaufman

Tags:: Design; Culture

Los Angeles–based mid-century modern specialist Sam Kaufman shares a few favorite items from his current inventory of "unusual modernist objects from the last century".

"Long Chair" by Marcel Breuer (Great Britain, 1937)
The London-based "Isokon" group was at the center of the Modernism movement in pre-war Britain; their club, the Isobar, was a favorite hangout for artists and intellectuals. Isokon's head designers included Walter Gropius and Marcel Breuer, the ex-Bauhaus refugees. The "Long Chair" was perhaps the most highly developed of all the plywood designs supplied to Isokon by Breuer. Its form recalls a reclining nude by Henry Moore (one of the regulars at the Isobar), while the patina on this example is every bit that of fine sculpture. This chair is a rare prewar example made by Isokon. (This design was also reproduced in the 1960s, by Knoll.) $9,300