It’s on TV commercials where it instantly signals universally acceptable good taste; it’s in your doctor’s office and your dentist’s waiting room, silently exuding a reassuring stability; it’s in furniture chain stores where it’s popular for its easy-to-assemble, pick-and-mix aesthetic. Yet it still maintains its elite status. Plenty of it was on show in Objectspace gallery’s recent The Chair exhibition in Auckland and still is in the eponymous environments of Jane Ussher and John Walsh’s lavish Rooms book.
It’s mid-century modern and it’s the style that won’t die. It is, in fact, still gathering momentum.
It’s easy to find, but slightly harder to define, although, of course, the name “mid-century” is a bit of a giveaway.
Let University of Auckland heritage design expert Linda Tyler try: “Anything that’s made in the 1950s to about 1970 and which displays new technologies and bold use of materials and frequent deployment, usually, of bright colour and primary colour.
“Even though there are things that are made well into the 70s and 80s that are copies of mid-century modern, there’s something about the older things from the 50s that have this special aura about them.”
She sees a contemporary parallel with the impending influence of AI on design. Just as AI is enabling new things to be done in the visual arts and elsewhere, back then, “People were able to suddenly come up with shapes and forms that weren’t seen before, [like] Noguchi coffee tables with the amoeba shapes.”
Perhaps the quintessential pieces of “mid-cench” – as its more recent devotees winsomely abbreviate it – are a sofa with thin arms and legs and a seat and back in brightly coloured upholstery, or a low sideboard, both featuring teak or pale blond wood. You can almost smell the Nordic forest.
It might be most accurate to say “mid-century” refers to when the style began, because here we are, well into the 21st century, and it’s still going strong. Descendant designs, several generations removed from the originals, are available at the likes of Nood or Freedom Furniture.
“It’s extremely popular,” confirms Florence S Fournier, decorative arts specialist at Webb’s auction house in Auckland. “Last year, we held two dedicated mid-century modern auctions and people went crazy for it. We had more than 300,000 catalogue views across both – phenomenal numbers. And we had 1300 registered bidders.”
Recent prices at auction have surged past top estimates –a 1950s George Nelson basic series sideboard for Herman Miller reached $6000 and a fairly ordinary-looking legacy piece, Charlotte Perriand shelf from Cité Cansado, went for $65,725.
Fournier has a broad definition of the style: “It kind of can be what you want it to be; there are so many different aesthetics within it.” However, there are some “design principles – generally more refined, no excessive detail”. Excessive detail is a feature of the relatively fussy arts and crafts and art nouveau movements that had preceded mid-cench.
This point is echoed by Judith Miller in her 2012 book Mid-Century Modern, describing a “philosophy … that decoration should be an integral part of design, rather than a superfluous addition”. Arts and crafts insisted on better craftsmanship, which meant higher costs. When mass production improved, the quality could be maintained for less money.
Sleek lines
So what are these pieces trying to tell us? “A lot of them have a sense of post-war optimism,” says Fournier. “After World War II, people’s ideas have shifted – that really comes through from 1945 to the 70s.” That signature sideboard can be a bit dull, but that’s the point. “They don’t have the ornament. They’ve just got these really sleek lines. For the time that they were made, to be so plain was quite a big design statement.”
Rufus Knight, director of interior design firm Knight Associates, thinks mid-cench needs to be kept in its place, but concedes it also has a democratising political element. “The post-war period was very much about providing well-thought-out solutions to the mass market, making it accessible, and I think a lot of the furniture reflects that.”
New Zealand is not an international exception in its enthusiasm for the style, although given we are geographically as far as it is possible to get from its northern European origins, it’s worth asking how it got here so quickly after the war.
“People weren’t by any means behind the times here,” says Tyler. “They were watching very closely what was happening in Europe in terms of developing an international style that came out of a desire not to have a nationalist inflection in buildings.”
Fortunately, perhaps, we find an element of Kiwi can-do ingenuity at work here also.
“[Design firm] Brenner Associates, which was [artist] Milan Mrkusich and his mates, had to basically learn how to do very good copies of things they were seeing overseas, because directly after WWII, it was very difficult to bring things in their entirety into New Zealand,” says Tyler.
“So you basically had to break them down and look at the constituent parts and see how you could do a knock-off with the materials that were available.”
Having to go to all that trouble, Brenner, and other designers, were no doubt keen to see their work disseminated widely and worked hard to achieve that.
Tongue-in-cheek
None of which explains why the style has maintained its appeal – with a cyclical dip here and there – for a good 70-plus years. Tyler says it was kicked along with The 1950s Show at Auckland Art Gallery in 1992-93. “I think that probably put the 50s on the map.”
It seems likely, too, that in an age of gloom, the nostalgic glow of the style provides much-needed comfort, reminding us that optimism was once a real possibility.
Fournier also alludes to a quality seldom allowed into discussions of design: humour.
“Especially with the space-age 60s, if you think about things like the Ball Chair [Eero Aarnio, 1963], which is a classic round chair upholstered with a red seat in it, there’s a tongue-in-cheek nature to them.
“Sometimes I’ll see a design like the Tongue Chair [Pierre Paulin, 1967] and think, ‘Well, I don’t know about that,’ then you find out it’s called a tongue chair. And suddenly the design makes sense: ‘Oh, that’s funny.’ It’s quite a nice insight into how the designers were feeling.”
John Mai of Auckland’s The Vintage Shop says the style’s other appealing qualities include quality itself. “With proper care, you’ll probably see a piece go to 100 years old, and it’ll be a proper antique at 100 years old, because it was so well designed and it’s so pure and doesn’t really age.”
It has been claimed that mid-cench is particularly suited to the New Zealand physical environment, and local designers in the style have played to this. After all, it originates in a clean green part of the world where the outdoor environment is a central part of national identity.
“A lot of modernist architecture in New Zealand is focused on integrating the indoor-outdoor flow and embracing the natural environment,” says Fournier. The use of natural timber for furniture literally does bring the outdoors indoors.
Which is probably why Mai has so many customers in the spectacular southern landscapes where the indoor-outdoor distinction exists to be obliterated. “A lot of Queenstown and Wānaka folk fly up specifically to come and see me and check out bits in person.”
His vintage pieces are perfect for “the lived-in vibe, which is something that they want to introduce into the new building surroundings around them”.
Rufus Knight sees “a real affinity between the biophilic aspects of the design of natural timbers, the shapes and some of those design characteristics we see in New Zealand and celebrate in New Zealand as well”.
Knight is not an uncritical fan and keeps mid-century components to a minimum in his design practice. Globalisation as represented in mid-century modern has wiped out a lot of individual qualities.
“My appreciation for it is very narrow. Modernism was pretty strident in removing cultural eccentricities in things.”
Relaxed and breezy
So the brand is bland. But that, of course, is just what a lot of people want. Mai lists his customers: “Business owners come in, people who would like to fit out restaurants, advertising agencies for their common areas. A lot of lawyers and doctors. And first-home buyers who want to fill it up with the right pieces.”
There are certain qualities businesses acquire with their mid-century furniture. “Advertising companies like the unique authentic look,” says Mai.
The message they’re buying is that their businesses are about quality and reliability. They won’t scare you with anything too controversial, but they care about appearances and value what is genuine.
Fournier expands on this: “I think it’s a pretty consumable way of saying, ‘We’ve got some idea of taste’, more so than, say, a contemporary, white, shiny plastic sideboard or cabinet. Wood brings warmth and a casual look, as if you want to say, ‘Look how relaxed we are, and everything’s breezy for us because of this.’”
Mai sources all his stock from overseas, using criteria that limit what he will buy.
“I am super picky about the quality of the goods. I’m just buying good examples and therefore I know my examples will live longer than the ones that have been battered.”
You can kick-start or feed your mid-cench passion at the likes of Mai’s Vintage Store or Mr Bigglesworthy and auction houses such as Webb’s. Pieces can cost a few thousand dollars, but it is possible to go to Trade Me or even op shops and buy for a tenth of that price if you’re not too fussy. Academics aren’t known for their shopping tips, but Linda Tyler proves to be an exception.
“You can go upstairs at Matisse in the Strand [Parnell, Auckland],” she confides. “I teach a course called modernism of design and I used to take my students there. And they had an LC4, which is the Le Corbusier club chair, that had been on the showroom floor. And it was so cheap. I thought, why would you buy a horrible new thing that’s going to be worthless next year and have bits fall off, when you could have that, which is actually manufactured under licence and uses the same technologies?
“It’s effectively a reproduction but it’s a good reproduction. It’s going to be worth something.
“So my advice is to go to places that have the licence for all the wonderful Danish designers and [have marked] down the pieces that have been on the shop floor a bit long.”
Although all his pieces are original imports, Mai also has a keen eye for price and worth. “The Danish furniture probably has more value.
“If you go down the rabbit hole of high-end stuff, some of it’s pretty crazy. We target the mid-range to mid-high; the very high end of the market I don’t think New Zealand’s really quite ready for.”
Business is good. “I wouldn’t say it’s recession-proof, but during Covid it was mental. I was bringing in six containers a year and it was just flying out the door. People wanted to live their life after being locked down and they thought they should have been locked down with a nicer sofa.”
Of course, as with any shopping addiction, things can get out of hand, and buyer’s remorse is not unknown, as one victim recalls with a shudder.
“We spent a stupid amount of money on a 1950s sofa that converted to a bed, a Don [leading New Zealand design brand]. Fully restored and recovered at the highest possible cost from a specialist store. We quickly found it was horrible to sit on as a sofa, and worse as a bed, as the two component squabs would separate under the sleeper, leaving them wedged onto the webbing. We onsold it, though, to someone just as fixated on mid-century design.”
Will there be a next-century modern?
We asked the experts what the alternatives to mid-century modern are. Surely there are self-respecting designers not following a 75-year-old trend but doing new and interesting work here?
Florence S Fournier provided a list of names that includes many designers who still have the mid-cench influence – with pared-back designs, lots of wood – but have a more current feel: Simon James, Resident, Jamie McLellan, David Moreland and Città, Gerard Dombroski, Snelling Studio, Tim Webber, David Trubridge (lighting), WRW & Co and Apartmento.
Rufus Knight was slightly more selective. He nominated as “more artisanal furniture makers with a more limited output, Grant Bailey, a designer who’s based in Auckland and has done some work for us, and David White, based in Mahurangi. Also, Tréology in Christchurch are in the business of making contemporary furniture. They find reclaimed timber, like kauri out of swamps and rivers, and make a table or a chair or storage unit. So, it’s sort of circled back to the regional approach.”