Collection by Olivia Martin
Artful Midcentury Remodels
Renovating a historic home can be daunting, but these seven remodels balance past, present, and future.
Living with Legends: The History Behind an Incredible Find
The Ion chairs by Gideon Kramer were introduced in the Space Needle’s Eye of the Needle restaurant at the 1962 World’s Fair in Seattle. They were designed for the Ion Furniture Company in chromed steel and fiberglass. “I became aware of the requirements as well as deficiencies of seating and decided to see if I could do better,” Kramer said of the design. “The chair took its form from the process which it was intended to support.” Initial prototypes, he said, “were fabricated out of Vulcanized Fiber, with the simplest of tooling. Soaked in our bathtub, formed on a wood fixture, baked over the living room stove, hung on a wash line to be sprayed with a resin finish. [It was] a low tech family enterprise.”