Giveaway time again!

In his own inimitable fashion of coming up with giveaways so generous that you can't believe what you're reading, my SIL just announced the latest contest. This time, he's giving away this vintage black leather Barcelona chair and ottoman.

All you have to do is click the link and enter to win!!! You can share this link on your Facebook page once a day for more chances to win. You can also tweet this once a day for more chances to win. For every friend that enters, you get an extra chance to win.

We will reveal the winner on Saturday, August 10th. Seriously...what are you waiting for????!!! Good luck from all of us at mid2mod.

Enter here to win: http://bit.ly/16jVrBR

You also get an extra chance to win if you become (or already are) a follower of this blog, either with Google Friend Connect or Bloglovin'. All you have to do is comment below on this post, tell me that you just signed up as a new follower or already follow the blog, and once I see your name on either of the list of followers, I'll pass the information along to my SIL. (Buttons you can use to join are on the right hand side of this page.)

Here are just a few of the things he's given away in the  past:

Barcelona, Barcelona

The other day my SIL came home with a black Barcelona chair and ottoman. While it isn't a Knoll chair, it is a very old Italian chair, probably from the 1960s, as evidenced by the flathead screws and the old label.

Italian leather Barcelona style chair and ottoman

The next day he picked up a gorgeous Knoll version in white. This one has the Knoll signature stainless steel frame.

Knoll Barcelona chair by Mies van der Rohe

Mid2Mod hits a milestone and MCM hits retirement age

I didn't set off any fireworks on the Fourth of July because I was saving them for the day I hit 100,000 page views on my blog, which I did yesterday! Thanks, everyone, for all your support and positive comments (and a special thanks to those of you who have come to visit me from all over the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex and from as far away as Memphis, Tennessee and Ontario, Canada). I follow many of your blogs as faithfully as you do mine and enjoy them tremendously.

Thanks for over 100,000 page views!

Speaking of blogs I follow...This fueledbycoffee cartoon was featured on one of my favorite blogs--Mid-Century Austin Living--a few days ago, and while we all share some readers in common, I thought I'd post this for those of you who don't follow the other two blogs yet. It's too cute to miss, especially for those of you who are nearing my age. (I just turned 63 at the end of June and have been retired since 2002, so these items are quickly becoming no joking matter. Any of you would-be entrepreneurs out there want to start cranking them out for us Baby Boomers?)

I'm still  laughing about the Noguchi tub rails and the La-Z-Boy womb chair. I need those!

According to a Manufacturer: Is it real?

Last week I posted about the first article in a three-part series on the Jet Set Modern website. The second contributor to the article "Is It Real?" is William F. Berg of Modern Wood Works in Kenner, Louisiana. His company manufactures a line of shelving based on the design of Eames shelving units. (First post: According to a Collector)

Berg clarifies the laws concerning inventions and designs, explaining two types patents:

• Utility patents - Protect inventors for 20 years. Charles Eames received a utility patent in 1942 for "A Method of Laminating Articles," which included the curved plywood chair.
• Design patents - Keeps a designer from being copied for 14 years. Eames received one of these in 1948 for the LCW (Lounge Chair Wood).

Once these patents expire, they can not be renewed. At that point, it is entirely legal for any manufacturer to use the design and put his own label on the resulting product.

Trademarks, which include words, names or logos that identify a product, can be renewed. For example, Knoll, Inc. has exclusive rights to the word Knoll when applied to furniture. Knoll also has the rights to the term Barcelona. Once the patent on a design expires and it enters the public domain, anyone can manufacture the item but cannot call it by its trademark name. Hence, all the inventive names given to Barcelona chair look-alikes, such as "The Pamplona," which is a regular in Craigslist ads.

Berg answers the accusation that manufacturing or buying a reproduction is unethical or immoral by pointing out that most Americans feel fine about buying generic drugs. Most have made copies on machines that were not made by Xerox, and most have talked on telephones not tied by pedigree to Alexander Graham Bell. Looking at it that way, maybe we are cherry-picking our causes about which to be righteously indignant. 

Berg considers the terms knock-off, reproduction and re-issue (both "authorized" and "unauthorized") to be little more than sales ploys to discredit legitimate competitors who are operating completely within the scope of patent and trademark laws. He says that if a company is honest, makes a good product true to the original design that meets your needs and makes it at a fair price, buy it.  He also reminds the reader that the original goal of the modern design movement was to make well-designed products affordable to the masses. 

So...can you tell these apart without looking a my sources?  One is a vintage Eames CSU, one is by Matt Blatt, and one is by Vitra.

The "authorized" version, 2011
vitra.com

Replica by Matt Blatt
mattblatt.com.au

The vintage Eames piece
treadwaygallery.com

Update: 4-19-2014 - The article that was originally on the Jet Set Modern site has been deleted, so I have removed the dead links from this post.

Lilly Reich

An icon of modern classic design and an international symbol of good taste, the Barcelona chair is one of the classiest chairs you can own. It is so much a part of the modern interior landscape that we might be forgiven feeling a certain familial loyalty to it and to its designer, Mies Van Der Rohe. Yet the Barcelona Chair was not designed by Mies alone. Multiple records state conclusively that this honor should be shared by his co-designer, a female architect and designer by the name of Lilly Reich (1885–1947). Many people maintain that Mies never intended to take all the credit for the Barcelona chair. He never denied her contribution, but his quiet nature did not make him a vocal supporter either.

Confined to traditionally acceptable female careers, Lilly Reich began her working life as a designer of textiles and women's apparel, but in 1912 she joined the Deutsch Werkbund, an organization often credited with sowing the first seeds of modern design and the precursor to the Bauhaus School. She worked in the studio of the famous Bauhaus designer Josef Hoffman, and by 1915 she had developed a professional reputation sufficient to be given increasing levels of responsibility at the Werkbund. In 1920 she became the first female to be made director of the Deutsch Werkbund.

It was also through the Werkbund that Reich met Mies and became his personal and professional partner. In the twelve years leading up to 1938, when Mies emigrated to the US, they were inseparable. Even after Mies left Germany, Lilly Reich continued to manage his personal and business affairs until her own death. She was at least as skilled a designer as Mies and was probably more articulate than he. Those who knew them regard her as the detail and execution person and Mies the broad conceptualist.

In 1939 Lilly visited Mies in the US but unfortunately did not stay. Shortly after her return to Germany, war broke out. In 1943 her studio was bombed. Luckily, when the bombing started she had moved 4000 drawings, including 900 of her own and 3100 of Mies’, to a farmhouse outside of Berlin to protect them.

Reich was drafted into a forced labor organization from 1943 to 1945. After her release and before her untimely death in 1947, she was instrumental in reviving the Werkbund, although it did not receive full legal status until three years after her death.

In addition to the Barcelona chair (also known as the Pavilion chair), Reich most likely deserves co-designer honors for the Brno chair, as well as several pieces of furniture in the famed Tugendhat House.

From barcelonachair.com

Bookcase, Tugendhat House
tugendhat.eu

Cabinet, Tugendhat House
tugendhat.eu

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

Mies van der Rohe (1886-1969) received little formal architectural or design training. After working briefly as a stonemason for the family business, Mies moved to Berlin in 1905. There, he joined the office of Bruno Paul, where he learned furniture design. In 1908, he took a job with Peter Behrens; his colleagues in that office included Le Corbusier and Walter Gropius. Mies went into private practice in 1913, adding the more impressive Rohe, his mother´s maiden name, although he is most commonly referred to simply as Mies.

Mies, often in collaboration with Lilly Reich, designed furniture for many of his early projects, and most of it is still in production today.  In particular, furnishings for the Tugendhat House and the Barcelona Pavilion have become design icons.

In 1937, Mies was appointed head of the architecture department at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago, and he left Germany permanently to settle there. His ideas would irrevocably alter the American architectural landscape.  The Seagram Building in New York (1958) was one of the first glass office towers in America, and has since inspired countless imitations. Mies' work was widely published and exhibited, and he was generally regarded as the foremost living architect.

Notable furniture designs include the cantilever MR10 chair, the Barcelona suite of furniture, the Brno chair and the 248L chaise.

From lostcityarts.com

Barcelona chair
1stdibs.com

Barcelona daybed
1stdibs.com

MR chair
moma.org

MR chaise
1stdibs.com

Tugendhat chairs
1stdibs.com

Brno chair
knoll.com

Pronunciation Guide