furniture

In art, unlike design, the line dividing great work from the merely popular is most often drawn by our aesthetic institutions: Critics, academics, historians, and collectors—collectors, especially. After that, if a work can withstand the vagaries of the market and time then it may, at last, be something for the ages. What's conspicuously missing from this list is the public. In the final tally, they matter little.

But what if the mass market was the decider? Using reproduction numbers as a gauge, choosing a winner wouldn't be much of a contest.

On the left below, a Christ by painter Warner Sallman (that's his pic above, right) from 1940. He was once declared "the best known artist of the century" by The New York Times. His painting has been reproduced more than 500 million times to date. (During WW II alone, one printing shop kept two shifts of press laborers running on this image alone.)

On the right, La Gioconde, the best known painting in the world, Christendom and beyond, and source material for incalculable mountains of kitsch. (Leonardo's pic is above, left.)

As for critical acclaim, that's another matter. Just for argument's sake, let's say we let the pointy heads of the institution decide: In 2004 a group of 500 selected British art world professionals were asked to vote on what they thought was the most influential artwork of the 20th century. Their winner?

The inventor of conceptual art and the self-proclaimed de-deifier of the artist, Marcel Duchamp and his infamous Fountain. (You were thinking Norman Rockwell perhaps?)

Design, on the other hand, needs more than critical acclaim. It needs sales. (As Henrik Fiskar said design that isn't profitable we call art.) However the critics and taste-makers enthuse about a particular designer object, without public support it's dead as Dada. Still, there's no reason to fear a cultural takeover by bean bags and barcaloungers: While the plebeians may get the final word on pop culture, aesthetic culture is another matter entirely.

This may go a ways to explain why furniture design remains fixed in the traditional and why we can't seem to move away from mid-century. As we've discussed before, most chairs inhabiting our spaces these days have pedigrees extending back generations if not thousands of years. Prior to mid-century, the last furniture revolution coincided with the rise of industrialization and the materials it made available. Since then, the tried and true have prevailed. With few exceptions, the edgy rarely finds its way to our dinner tables or living rooms.

To wit: Phillipe Starke's Louis Ghost Chair. A streamlined dining table version of the Louis XIV warhorse reimagined in plexi.

As flexible as it is invisible.

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Below, Starke's creation infiltrates the set of Gossip Girl.

Given the mantle of founder of American Modernism, George Nelson's designs manage to work slightly outside the sphere of the traditional form.

Below, the Coconut chair from 1955 (still available from Herman Miller): Nelson also gave us the first modular storage system and a forerunner of systems furniture.

Nelson argued that a design could push all extremes except the one that sacrifices its humanity: [A designer] must first make a radical, conscious break with all values he identifies as antihuman... total design is nothing more or less than a process of relating everything to everything." There, you see: It's easy.

Above, the Marshmallow sofa by George Nelson and Irving Harper from 1956:

Below, decorator Billy Baldwin's famous slipper chair: A crisp and prim accent chair that takes its upholstery to the floor. There's a reason for that. Baldwin believed exposed legs gave a room the appearance of restlessness. Furniture should be designed first and foremost for comfort. The Slipper was designed for short term seating, low enough to make it easy for putting on shoes, no arms for easy in and out access, and look that was sharp and plush.

Below, the Cotton Candy version currently available at Urban Outfitters (with its  un-Baldwinesque exposed legs). The legacy of the chair also continues at Target, Crate and Barrel, and Pottery Barn. The Slipper is still hot, it seems.

One of the founders of the Bauhaus, Walter Gropius interprets the Chesterfield. The style, named after England's Earls of Chesterfield, goes back over 200 years and describes seating with arms and back of the same height.

A more recent reworking of the design concept in the B & B Italia Tulip chair:

The Chesterfield, the traditional and a modern reimagining:

In an earlier post we discussed Harry Bertoia's Diamond chair, a chair known for its innovative use of steel wire. Other versions would include the Bird chair with ottoman and the Café chair.

Bertoia was also a college classmate of Florence Knoll. It was Knoll who offered to manufacture Bertoia's chair. His pioneering work would bring him many laurels including an AIA Gold Medal and Designer of the Year.

Below, the Bird chair under a disguise of upholstery:

Bertoia was a multi-hyphenated sculptor, furniture designer, creator of wedding rings for Charles and Ray Eames, and college lecturer. (Bertoia also created a series of 10 Sonambient record albums based on the sounds of his wire Sounding Sculptures. See a demonstration of the sound here.) The Diamond chair has been in production since 1952.

Below, fiberglass Shell side chairs:

An important part of the mid-century style explosion was Danish Modern, a form epitomized by countrymen Arne Jacobsen (featured here), Finn Juhl (as seen here), Arne Vodder, and Arne Hovmand-Olsen. All four designers would enjoy international recognition and all owe a large debt to their forbear, Kaare Klint.

Below, Klint's Faaborg chair.

Klint's Propeller stool, owing much to the Egyptians:

While Klint and the Danish Modernists agreed with much that was going with Bauhaus, there were stark differences. The Bauhaus style stressed form and function as a singularity, minimalistic design without adornment, and industrial materials, especially steel tubing and glass. Bauhaus also represented a conscious break from Art Nouveau which had begun to fade with the beginning of the 20th century. Klint and other Danes were less inclined to let go of Nouveau's naturalistic motifs and organic forms. They preferred wood as a material and hand-crafted over the industrial as well as having design respond to the human body and its behaviors more than efficiency of industrial fabrication.

The Safari Chair from 1933:

The Safari reimagined (with a little Chinese style thrown in) from 1984 by Dutch designer Ruud-Jan Kokke:

Below, a Klint Lounger:

Bauhaus was founded in 1919 as a merger of the Grand Ducal School of Arts and Crafts and the Weimar Academy of Fine Art, the former directed by Belgian Henry van de Velde. Velde would also be the Bauhaus school's first director, a job he would be forced from as the nationalists rose to power in Germany. Van de Velde would choose Walter Gropius to be his successor. The change over would also bring an end to the influence of Nouveau.

Henry van de Velde's work would bridge Nouveau and Bauhaus:

The chair on the left is from a pre-Bauhaus period of 1897; On the right, Velde eschews the organic for a more industrial look:

More chairs to come in Part 4.

Gray is the yin and yang altogether. It's the feminine in the way it nurtures and supports surrounding colors. It's also the masculine, an ominous sky and battleships. In the tonal palette it represents Switzerland: Neutral, cool, subdued, sophisticated, elegant, corporate, and serious.

In the right hands it is grace, as in the designs of David Hicks (the two below) which are nothing like corporate.

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Gray socializes well with other colors. It is a peacemaker. It pulls back bright colors and grounds darks and lights. It's most agreeable: In a family of purple, pink, and yellow it is a kind of visual middle child.

It's the epitome of diversity and the ultimate equalizer. It is also bold without being assertive. An abused gray can easily turn into a drone: drab, dull, and dead. Yet within it is always the potential for the spectacular.

It is simple, understated elegance, refined enough to never call attention to itself.

In the garden, it stands back and launches the green and red forward.

It makes even a hand-made look natural in the landscape.

Paint the walls or swath a fabric around a room and it can gush as much color as you like. But this isn't about that. This is about choosing a whisper or a breath, an accent to stand apart.

In design, like art and politics, power can come from the margins.

Here, the blue flowers make a brilliant and contained explosion.

A suggestion of a tint from the windows adds a low chorus to the blue of the sky.

Tomorrow, the table could be red. But for today, it's blue.

Beneath the cabinet there's another margin of opportunity.

The quasi-blue of Mexican Blue Palms at LAX, and the Hilton Hotel in Pattaya, Thailand, with intermittent radiating blue cubes.

Black needs no surrogate or replacement; there is no new black. The old one is still doing just fine.

Our relationship with black as a medium goes back at least 35,000 years. Many of the primordial art materials were black — soot, charcoal, pitch, asphaltum — and were most likely associated with ritual and special occasions. Because of this, no color is as heavy with significance. Black was associated with authority, priests, and royals. It was also the dark of night, the void, the beginning and the end. It would come to symbolize death, mourning, evil, magic, and no doubt because of all of the above, sex.

Black would be integral to cultures around the world. The earliest uses of black in manufacturing that can be dated include Korean and Chinese lacquering and pottery around 700 -800 BCE. A short time later it would also be found in Greece and the Americas.

Below: Black-figure Neck Amphora, 6th century BCE.

When old age shall this generation waste,
Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe
Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say'st,
``Beauty is truth, truth beauty,''--that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.
John Keats, Ode to a Grecian Urn

While black was the color of power it also symbolized submission. Priests don black to demonstrate their submission to God.

Black was also favored by vampires and witches for implications of evil. It also gives the wearer the appearance of being thinner which for many of us may be the opposite of evil.

Boulders suspended in a sea of high gloss black walls.

Black is the complete absorption of all colors and the absence of light. It is those properties that make black, along with yellow, the most visible. (The reason why it's used on street signage.)

Robert Longo prints and Queen Anne chairs direct the otherwise subtle tones of the wallpaper and flooring.

An old school remix with Adolf Loos:

And David Hicks:

Interior designer Billy Baldwin's blend of classicism and modernism is described with a Louis XV chair and a Chinese table framed in black with flashes of gold. His ca. '50s Slipper chair is in the foreground.

The Interior designer that the New Yorker once called the presiding grande dame of West Coast interior design and erstwhile Playboy Playmate, Kelly Wearstler, channels some serious David Hicks mojo in her use of black, above and below.

Storied designer Nicky Haslam channels his own version of Dorothy Draper mojo:

The entrance to the Avenfield House, Park Lane, London:

For this British home, Haslam turns up the aristocratic swank. Shiny and glittering surfaces bounce a little harder given the undertones of black.

The white linens on this bed designed by Loyd Ray Taylor and Charles Paxton Gremillion, Jr. bursts into the room's stark black.

The cabinet gives a touch of black to add drama:

Black deftly provides some cold yin to the room's otherwise white hot yang.

A chair is a very difficult object. A skyscraper is almost easier. That is why Chippendale is famous.
- Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

Thomas Chippendale speaks for himself from a upholstered dining chair, above.

Is there another designed object in human history that can compare with the aesthetic tenacity of a well designed chair? The chair isn't subject to the same vagaries and fashionable whims that rule the best in other disciplines. Instead, a great chair seems to operate in a kind of geological time; Through thousands of years we see the same forms popping-up again and again, as if its DNA were as indefatigable as that of the cockroach.

To wit, the Egyptian chair:

This from the tomb of Hatnofer and Ramose, western Thebes ca. 1479–1473 BCE: Chair made from boxwood, cypress, ebony, and linen cord.

Egyptians began metal toolmaking around 4500 BCE and woodworking wouldn't have been far behind. Their aesthetic influence on furniture has proven to be nearly as long. Wood furniture produced at the time incorporated mortise and tenon joints and inlay.

Above: An ornate acacia stool.

Danish designer Finn Juhl created the Egyptian chair in 1949:

And, the Chieftain chair in the same year:

Another enduring Egyptian form is the X-chair or stool, (AKA as the Savonarola, Dante, and Scissors chairs). This, a Roman version:

A Louis XV styled version:

And famously, the Mies van der Rohe Barcelona designed for the King and Queen of Spain in 1929:

The Barcelona was awarded with the Museum of Modern Art Award in 1977.

The Greek Klismos chair and its successors:

If you attended school on the planet Earth anytime in the last 50 years it's likely you sat on a chair like this:

(A injection molded plastic version is the one I remember....)

But before this chair became the ubiquitous and nearly invisible object of our collective consciousnesses, it had a designer and a name: The Revolt by legendary designer and Amsterdammer Friso Kramer. (Ironic title given its eventual institutional use.) Designed in 1953 to compete with a chair already popular in its time by Wilhelm Gispen. Though the differences between the Kramers and the Gispens may be mostly academic, in the world of institutional Chair-dom the contest definitely had a winner. Manufacture of the Gispen would end by 1963.

The Gispen:

Gispen may be better remembered for his Art Deco-y bent tubular steel armchairs; A chair that may've gone on to its final rest in the hair salons of the world.

Mid-century Modernism may prove to be the Classic era of chair design. Peruse the catalog of any furniture manufacturer of quality these days and take note how the Mid-century aesthetic still rules. If the recent exhibition at LACMA on mid-century design in California is any indication, the honeymoon has yet to show signs of fatigue.

Another case in point, Charles and Ray Eames:

To start, the Eames Management office chair: The multitude of products borne of this design are still infiltrating offices from Madison Avenue to Shibuya and many points in between. The Eames Greatest Hits album would require at least a boxed-set: Their list of successes was a long one.

Throwing all industrial design under one tiny umbrella in its Best Design category, Time Magazine's Best of the Century listing gave the Eames molded plywood dining chair (1946) the singular distinction of being design's acme : "Much copied, never bettered."

The LCW (Lounge Chair Wood above in dark wood) and the DCM (Dining Chair Metal; above in blond wood) from 1948. There'd be variations, like a three-legged version, but this was the Mama to the many babies that would follow. Kramer's more vernacular Revolt remix (as seen at top of this post) would be one example.

Then, of course, there was that iconic lounger from 1956:

Originally designed for Chicago's O'Hare airport in 1962, the Eames's Tandem Sling seating is still comforting the weary derrières of traveling millions daily. And more than likely, yours too on occasion.

And then, their contribution to the rarefied field of Chairs of Near Invisible Ubiquity: The molded-plastic with Eiffel Tower wired base DSR also from 1948.

British designer Robin Day, generously borrowing from the Eames's and taking it one step further, created this stackable polypropylene version on an enameled tubular steel base. Introduced in 1963 when injection-molded polypropylene was a new technology. Injection allowed speedier production of numbers not possible with their wooden counterparts: 4,000 shells a week. At present, something like 14 to 20 million (depending on whom you believe) units have been produced making this the most mass produced chair ever.

It wouldn't be hard to imagine that both Eames and Day's chairs didn't borrow some of its form from a much older ancestor, the Windsor chair:

With origins that date back to the 16th century, the Windsor would've been all the rage in the colonial U.S. Also, you won't be surprised to learn that Windsors were originally built by wheelrights who coped out its spindles in the same way they did wheel spokes for wagons. Another obvious progeny of the Windsor is the Konsumstuhl Nr. 14, otherwise known as the café chair from 1859:

Developed by German-Austrian cabinet maker Michael Thonet the chair's breakthrough was in its use of steam bent wood. This "chair of chairs" (Le Corbusier was a fan), once unavoidable in cafés and dining rooms throughout the world, would have a pretty good run of its own with 50 million units produced by 1930.

For its own part, the Eames Management chair may've also inspired one of the most praised and popular office chairs ever: The Aeron.

Designed for Herman Miller by Don Chadwick and Bill Stumpf in 1994, the Aeron has won heaps of praise and troves of accolades for both its design and ergonomics. Among them: “Designs Greatest Hits” by Your Company magazine; “Design of the Decade” gold award winner by Business Week & Industrial Designers Society of America; IDSA "Design of the Decade" winner; Also, it's the only desk chair to gain a spot in the New York Museum of Modern Art.

Upholstered armchairs also have a demonstrated aesthetic sustainability. In most cases you could follow the lineage of just about every chair from Levitz warehouses to Design Within Reach showrooms, in markets both up and down, to examples below.

Judging from it's evergreen popularity you wouldn't know the design of Le Corbusier's so called LC2 - Fauteuil Grand confort, petit modèle (in collaboration with Charlotte Perriand and Pierre Jeannerrat) was a relic from 1928.

This candy-colored array is now available from Cassina.

These archtypal Club Chairs were from designer Jean-Michel Frank ca. 1930. Frank, who'd become a successful interior designer (he did Nelson Rockefeller's Fifth Avenue digs) was also a first cousin once removed to Anne Frank, designed a collection of minimalist furniture for Hermès beginning in 1924; More evergreen: The line was introduced by Hermès once again in 2011.

Frank's rounded armchair showing the contemporary influence of Art Deco.

Le Corbusier mentor and Moravian-born Josef Hoffmann was nicknamed "Quadratl-Hoffmann" (little squares) for his apparent fixation. This, the Kubus armchair, was from 1910 and appears to have had more than a little influence over his famous protégé. The Kubus is still in production.

Next in Chairs, Part 2: More history and more living room icons from Arne Jacobsen and Eero Saarinen as well as sixties whimsy and beyond.

It might've been comedian Steven Wright who asked: Why do we call them buildings; shouldn't they be called builts?

In the world of architecture, perhaps the most famous unbuilt of all may be that of Moravian born Austrio-Hungarian architect Adolf Loos. Loos was an early zealot for modernism and, as was made clear in his famous essay Ornament and Crime, a militant decorative reactionary. Said he:

The evolution of culture is synonymous with the removal of ornament from objects of everyday use.

Loos also created what he called the Raumplan which suggested that houses shouldn't be divided into rooms separated by walls. Instead, they should flow from a more continuous living space: Clearly, an idea whose time has come.

In 1928 he completed a design for a proposed Xanadu-styled dwelling for legendary American ex-pat singer, dancer, actress, and apparent enchantress, Josephine Baker.

Exactly how and why the design came about has long been the subject of speculation. She may've commissioned Loos for the design. Or not.

Here's a model of the legendary building:

And the tabloid version: At the winsome age of 19, Josephine Baker arrived in Paris to find work as singer and dancer. She quickly became an overnight sensation. This success allowed her into the most cultured circles of the Parisian fabulous. It'd be here that Loos encountered her and, like many others, was immediately smitten. Adopting her as his muse, he designed a grandiloquent residence unbeknownst to La Bakaire. He presented his vision of Chez Baker to her in 1928. (She would've been 22 at the time.) How in her youth, even as a sensation, she'd be able to afford a palace clad in black and white marble, split into three levels with spiraling staircases, a cylindrical tower, and an interior second floor pool is a mystery. (See floor plans here.) Baker's response to either the design or designer is unknown.

Why Loos would be enthralled with La Bakaire isn't hard to imagine: Leaving New York behind as "the highest-paid chorus girl in vaudville," her dances and costumes in the Folies Bergères and other productions were famously provocative. She was beautiful, exotic, and a fluent jazz dancer at a time when jazz was the vanguard. But even this pales to her experience during the war in the French Resistance. She also spoke at the podium before Martin Luther King gave his I Have a Dream speech. (She was offered a leading role in the post-King civil rights movement: She turned it down.) As the victim of much racism in America and abroad (Hitler was not a fan) she'd adopt a dozen children from around the world, her so-called Rainbow Tribe, to make a point on diversity and compatibility. In his later years Loos would boast that Baker had taught him the Charleston.

But, clearly, there was more to Adolf Loos than leery fan-boy infatuation. His mix of austere classicism with modernist streamlining would meet with success.

Above, Villa Karma: His collaboration with architect Hugo Ehrlich is considered an early example of the modern house (Loos was the primary designer 1904-1906; Ehrlich would finish it). Loos's personal life was not nearly as balanced and harmonious as his professional one, particularly his health. (He was diagnosed with cancer early in his career.) Below; The Villa as seen on the inside.

The Villa Müller, below*: Due to Loos's failing health, the architect Karel Lhota was hired to help with the design. The client himself was a successful concrete contractor who had been working on some innovative uses of reinforced concrete which became part of the building's design. The building itself would have a colorful history of its own. (Thank you Veronica G. for the heads up!)

This sensibility, especially when applied to furnishings, would prove prescient: Below, a timeless chandelier from 1911 and a tumbler set from 1931.

Another renowned Loos unbuilt: This Doric column-styled tower was a proposal for the Chicago Tribune from 1922. Created for an architectural competition that would lure a gallery of marquee names including Walter Gropius, Adolf Meyer, and Eliel  Saarinen (father of Eero). Alas, none of them would prevail; the winning entry, which one contemporary critic said would set back architecture 50 years, has since been described as a "fruity Gothic pile."

Feeling his pain for the decorative in the everyday object, an homage to the maestro from artist Laurent Craste: Petite étude pour «Adolf Loos’s wet dream».

Some things are just better played loud, like an electric guitar.

Such is also the case with the work of British designer David Nightingale Hicks. His work is not for the timid. His use of color is strikingly bold, his motifs pulse with the heart of a giant, and his decors practically hum with manic energy. And yet, for all his optical vitality, his rooms still retain a sense of depth, space, and a kind of virtuosic harmony. Usually when we say harmony the implication is a kind of quietude, a relaxed state of being that happens when all fits into its place. Hicks's work reveals that there's so much more to it than that.

Any self-respecting designer should've no trouble making an impact with with red and gold;

but to go white with undiminished effect takes a singularly deft eye.

Or how about a bold purple room done with impeccable taste?

Or similar bold executions achieved in a limitless series of colored iterations:

As was noted in an earlier post on the history of interior design, Dorothy Draper, et al, early greats of design balanced their artistic sensibilities and ambitions with rosters of A-list of friends. David Hicks was no exception. (His first breakout project was the redecoration of his mother's house. And, by the way, his daughter's godfather was Prince Charles.) Yet, for all the blue blood tint in Hicks's social sphere, it's hard to imagine him toning down a project to pander to a client. If there's one thing apparent in a Hicks project, it'd be its utter lack of compromise.

Committees don't produce work like this:

Hicks was also known for his prodigious ability in the quick study. He could enter a room, light a cigarette, and decide within ten minutes what the aesthetic solution would be. You can imagine his difficulty in explaining the concept above. Eventually he'd just have to say, "trust me." It'll be brilliant. And he'd be right.

Shiny and velvety and round: Imagine another room featuring twin beds that's as completely sexy as this.

Hicks takes it outside.

Below are images of one of the most famous gardens in the world you've never seen: Hicks's private gardens at his home in Oxfordshire, The Grove.

Hicks mixes the traditional with whatever his fancy conjured; A description that'd probably describe all his work. History hammered into something beautiful and new.

It's been said that design is a way of solving problems. (Art is a different matter.)

So, how to solve this "problem?" To break it down: Take the creative process, strip out all the poetry and magic, leave it to the accountants and engineers to design a methodology, what you'd end up with might look like this:

This chart taken from the excellent Art Is Everywhere blog.

With the above in mind, then, art and design would appear to be a simple act of mental processing. Add a bit of inspiration, emotion, some personal history, jigger it with various approaches as shown above and layer (or not), repeat as necessary. Eventually, if you're lucky, something like the below might happen.

Behold, a chair: A designer may create a chair to provoke one to sit. The artist, on the other hand, may just want to provoke.

The iconic "Series 7" chair by Arne Jacobsen (1955) as reworked by Australian artist Lisa Jones. The motifs represent various  human organ systems. As for a place to sit, you may want to look elsewhere.

Below, a lamp of porcupine quills: Traditionally, animal products were used to imbue an object with the animal's power.

Unfortunately for the porcupine, quills have been gaining popularity in Afrocentric design. (South African porcupine quills pictured above.) As porcupines only shed their quills occasionally it wouldn't be possible to obtain the necessary quantities with non-lethal means. In other words, quill harvesting is not unlike the fur trade.

They are beautiful, though.

Rather than work with materials already imbued with power, Okinawan born artist Yuken Teruya does the opposite. Working with ephemera and discards, mostly paper products, he empowers the lowbrow.

Killing the context: Forests from toilet paper rolls.

Below, a side table made from the shell of a boiler.

The take-out box styled maple veneer stool is by Akiko Yokoyama.

The easy chair gone hard: Armchair in marble by Scott Burton.

Phillipe Ramette and from his Le Suicide des Objets series: Stress on a chair of the kind most designers usually don't consider.

Israeli designer Shmuel Linski created this coffee maker as a student project. Made from concrete with stainless steel parts the coffeemaker is fully functional.

Illustrator Mike Perry's commissions include a number of consumer products featuring his drawings. These Eames Shell chairs feature one-of-a-kind hand-drawn graphics by Perry. Available from Herman Miller.

Another take on the everpresent Eames chair; this unique Pincushion chair was created by Paula Scher for a charitable auction.

This Wassily chair was redesigned by Alessandro Mendini in 1978.

If you haven't already seen part 1, it's here.

Old and Bold: Above, Dorothy Draper's New York's Essex Hotel from 1954; Still brazen after all these years.

Interior Decoration may be design's oldest profession. Before there was a room, there was the tomb: Tomb construction goes back to the megalithic period, and cave painting even further. But it wasn't until well into the Industrial Revolution that interior design would be considered the legitimate industry it is now. With the help of the era's version of New Media — magazines — design could be mass marketed to middle class worker bees, a demographic who'd never had such access before. A cause forwarded by publications like Good Housekeeping, House Beautiful, and Ladies Home Journal, and others which all began near the end of the nineteenth century.

(Draper's Greenbrier Hotel, WV, above. Her Victorian Writing Room on the premises was once called The most photgraphed room in the United States.)

By the 'teens of the last century, the nascent industry was already minting its first superstars. Their names were Dorothy Draper, Syrie Maugham, Sybil Colefax, Elsie de Wolfe, Ruby Ross Wood, Rose Cumming, and Sister Parish (with her partner Albert Hadley). They would be women (mostly), born of wealth, blue of blood, and with design credentials often overshadowed by their status as socialites. Their client list — Astor, Vanderbilt, Kennedy, Roosevelt, Vreeland, Warhol, Jackie O, various Royals and other A-listers — would be impressive, and their influence, indelible. Interestingly, you'll find none of their names in Architectural Digest's "The 20 Greatest Designers of All Time." Maybe fashion is to blame; for most of the aforementioned, their work is wildly out of it. Maybe it's their use of chintzes, metallic wallpapers, paisleys, fabric by the truckload, and a musty classical grandiosity burlesqued too many years by too many lesser talents. Those who survived into the sixties would also live to see Minimalism torture their particular brand of high-style.

Designer egghead, theorist, Polosky Prize winner, and author John Pile (one of his definitive sourcebooks above) makes the point that "interior design is a field with unclear boundaries in which construction, architecture, furniture, decoration, technology, and product design all overlap."

With that in mind, The Evidence:

It's been argued that Dorothy Draper is the Mother of all interior designers (besides being Design Editor at Good Housekeeping and author of the classic Decorating Is Fun!). It was she who started the first interior design firm and was the first to "professionalize" the craft. (Though, according to the New Yorker this honor belongs to Elsie de Wolfe.) Whether she was first it seems clear its Draper's work that has left the more lasting legacy. Called the Martha Stewart of her time, she not only established herself in the otherwise female-unfriendly industry of construction, there was that best selling book and she was, from the 30s to the 60s, the most famous interior designer in the world. She was one of the first designers to use eclecticism authentically and not simply as a boast of an over-stamped passport. She is also the only interior designer, man or woman, to be honored with a retrospective at a major museum (starting with the Museum of the City of New York and traveling on).

Another Draper work: This from the Hotel Quitandinha in Ipanema, Brazil. Compare this to her contemporary, Elsie de Wolfe:

De Wolfe's work, while literate and fluent, was still very much a part of the Victorian age that was her time. Draper's style, often referred to as "mischevious," takes the Victorian motif as a starting point. She electrocutes it with color. She exaggerates the forms and modernizes them with affection and humor. And the impact of her work continues.

Two designers to be impacted by the Draper style were American Billy Baldwin and Brit David Hicks.

Billy Baldwin, called the dean of indigenous decorators by Architectural Digest — he hated the term interior designer (and just to note: another designer, Benjamin Baldwin, was similarly called the dean of American interior designers), may be best known for his treatment of Diana Vreeland's Park Avenue apartment. Her instructions to the designer: "I want this place to look like a garden, but a garden in Hell." Eclectic gone wild with exotic flourishes and few strokes of orientalism was his answer. (For a guy who said "the best way to decorate a room is to simplify" this must've been way outside his comfort zone.)  The room has an almost pummeling energy and dynamism which makes Draper's bold work practically understated by comparison. Baldwin takes Draper and spins it into something else, which, as we know, is what great creatives will do.

The design of David Hicks (above) came to symbolize the epitome of Swingin' Sixties style. Hicks was infatuated with motifs and geometry and his design, while extremely ordered and disciplined, pulses with anarchic energy and color. Not only could he dress a room, he could dress himself: He was voted Best Dressed Man from the Clothing Manufacturers Federation of UK.

From the Dean of Interior Design to the man Diana Vreeland called the James Dean of decorators: Michael Taylor. If the image above is any indication, his work didn't shrink from the bold. As a colorist, it was subtlety for which he'd be better known. Credited with inventing the California Look, Taylor's style is described as glamorous rustic. His neutral tones and natural textures might appear pale against the aggressive color of the Draper-ists but aggressive color or style would never go mainstream. Enter Michael Taylor: He would change that. His palatte, while subtler and muted, favored tertiary colors to play off the reflective mirrors, chandeliers, and white accents. And natural light: Abundant natural light was his meat.

The result: Whispered elegance and a substantial influence.

Unlike the others above, Taylor was one of Architectural Digest's "20 Greatest Designers of All Time." His supporters are legion. Taylor may also be the one designer who most significantly helped form our contemporary standards of good taste. Yet, in his time he was considered an innovator, an original, and for many he was the best of America's designers.

One design theorist recently spoke of aesthetic sustainability: If there's a yardstick for measuring a designer's greatness, sustainability may be it. With all things considered, for aesthetic adaptability and sustainability the verdict is:

Michael Taylor: World's Greatest Interior Designer.

Next, Part III: Furniture.

First, a disclaimer:
Is such a thing even possible, to designate one work the be all end all for everyone? Probably not. And even though we'll be confining our choices to the twentieth century, there's still loads of room for debate. Art and design, like politics, are emotional: The best work is forged from it, and our response is a product of it. Emotions are a kind of social anarchy where tastes are concerned; Each of us with our own internal wiring will inevitably make for spirited, complicated, and endless disagreement. Maybe awards for The Greatest are best left to accountants to tally up the tangibles, like sales and attendance. But art is a slipperier. As Humphrey Bogart said of the Oscars: " Awards are meaningless for actors, unless they all play the same part." Why should design be any different?

There are many Greatest lists, surveys, and Top Tens to choose from if you're satisfied that's close enough. But where's the fun in that? For this, The Definitive Guide to The World's Greatest Design, we're looking only for the acme, apex, and apogee : That true One. To find it may require a bit of data teasing and some creative speculation, but no matter: We'll get to the bottom of it.

Now, down to business.

1) Architecture
The evidence:
According to the paper The Greatest Architects of the Twentieth Century: Goals, Methods, and Life Cycles by David Galenson published by NBER, using a method of  surveying textbooks, Galenson was able to establish, based on his research, the greatest architect of the twentieth century: Le Corbusier.

Above, Le Corbusier's Chapel for Notre Dame du Haut, Ronchamp, France: The architect showing some influence of the popular Art Noveau and Art Deco movements of his time. In its Best of the Century feature in 1999, Time Magazine named The Chapel as Best Building. (Falling Water came in third.)

Time Magazine also called Le Corbusier "the most important architect of the twentieth century. Frank Lloyd Wright was more prolific [but] many would argue that Le Corbusier was more gifted." (Below, Villa Savoye, Poissy, France.)

Not that the legendary modernist didn't have his detractors. He's not only been blamed for the unsavory conditions of life in his high rises, but also for violent urban gangs. One critic accused him of being "to architecture what Pol Pot was to social reform." Ouch.

Galenson also makes the claim, using the same methodology, that Frank Gehry and Renzo Piano are the twentieth century's greatest living architects.

Frank Lloyd Wright (his Fallingwater above), on the other hand, was recognized in 1991 by the American Institute of Architects (AIA) as "the greatest American architect of all time." (It's interesting to note that Wright also thought of himself the same way.) The prodigious Wright designed more than a 1,000 projects and completed over 500. In addition, he wrote books and articles and, like Le Corbusier, designed all matter of other stuff as well: To him the term consummate designer would certainly apply.

As for the greatest single example of architecture, the Empire State Building: Ranked number one by the AIA on its List of America's Favorite Architecture and named one of the Seven Wonders of the Modern World by the American Society of Civil Engineers. Designed by architect William H. Lamb and completed in 1931, it was the tallest building in the world for 40 years (and is once again the tallest in NYC) and perhaps the greatest example of the Art Deco building style. It also remains one of the most popular tourist attractions in the world.

In 2010, Vanity Fair magazine published a survey among 52 of the world's most prominent architects, a list that included 11 Pritzker winners. This Western-tilted jury included the likes of Frank Gehry, Peter Eisenman, Michael Graves, Zaha Hadid, and Richard Meier. The quesiton? What is the most important piece of architecture built since 1980? The winner: Gehry's Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain.

Here's Phillip Johnson's anointment of the master in the same article:

"In February 1998, at the age of 91, Philip Johnson, the godfather of modern architecture, who 40 years earlier had collaborated with Ludwig Mies van der Rohe on the iconic Seagram Building, in Manhattan, traveled to Spain to see the just-completed Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao. He stood in the atrium of the massive, titanium-clad structure with its architect, Frank Gehry, as TV cameras from Charlie Rose captured him gesturing up to the torqued and sensually curving pillars that support the glass-and-steel ceiling and saying, 'Architecture is not about words. It’s about tears.' Breaking into heavy sobs, he added, 'I get the same feeling in Chartres Cathedral.' Bilbao had just opened its doors, but Johnson, the principal apostle of the two dominant forms of architecture in the 20th century—Modernism and Postmodernism—and the design establishment’s ultimate arbiter, was prepared to call it on the spot. He anointed Gehry 'the greatest architect we have today' and later declared the structure 'the greatest building of our time.' ”

There you have it: The Pritzker laureate and architect that brought Philip Johnson to tears. And in terms of cultural impact, Gehry's Guggenheim alone has had the effect of taking the otherwise unassuming Bilbao, a municipality only slightly larger than the city of Bakersfield, and bringing it to the world stage as a global destination.

The verdict:
Frank Gehry, World's Greatest Architect; The Guggenheim in Bilbao, World's Greatest (modern) Building.

Next in Part 2: Interior design.