Modern Print Monday: Curtain Call

I've been entertaining myself with this blog on modernism

for quite a while, but I have run out of things to say.

I haven't quite run out of pictures, however,

so here are a few I couldn't find a place for.

I'm not saying I won't pick up the thread again if I find something

new to say about the history of modernism and textiles.

If you subscribe by email you'll get a post notice if I 

resume blogging here.

Otherwise, as Bob Hope, spokesman for my

parents' generation, used to say...

"Thanks for the Memories."

A Tale of Two Chairs

Display at the Musee des Arts Decoratif

My friend Roseanne and I met her daughter and a friend in Paris last summer. My favorite place was the Musee des Arts Decoratifs in the Louvre. Roseanne likes medieval. I am looking at modern.

The Museum of Decorative Arts has an impressive display of modern chairs, which you can view from above. I was exclaiming; Roseanne was unimpressed. She said, "I've got a pair of chairs just like those in my basement." I couldn't figure out which one she was talking about, but I figured I'd better confiscate them when we got home.

Now I realize she was pointing to the dark brown chair in the

center here.

She was quite happy about my confiscation of the chairs although they did a good job of holding the laundry. She'd gotten them from her late father-in-law's house years ago. She never liked them.

She even delivered. They are not in perfect shape

but they cleaned up nice.

Here they are with our Christmas donation

quilt for the 2014 Festival of Trees fundraiser.

The City Sewers paper pieced it using the

 Geese in the Forest pattern from Twiddletails.

See the pattern here:

http://www.twiddletails.com/store/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=405

The chairs seem to be a form of the"Dax "chair designed by Charles Eames,

manufactured by Herman Miller.

This version is called a "Dax Rope-Edge Chair."

The shell is turquoise fiberglass, the upholstery

white naugahyde.

Sara Chappell's quilt (design by American Jane)  is on the wall here 

in the entrance hall in my new 1970 modern house.

UPDATE: See the CrissCross pattern by clicking and scrolling way down:

http://www.americanjane.com/patterns.php

A restored pair of upholstered Dax chairs

The stickers on the bottom of mine indicate they were from an Air Force

Officers' club (Roseanne's father-in-law was in the Air Force.)

I found one just like them on line. It said the white chairs

were from 1954. The chair in Switzerland still has the Herman Miller stickers. Mine don't.

Here's my favorite thing about Mid-Century Modernism. While I haven't found a Stickley chair gathering dust in any one's basement in a long time, it is indeed possible to find great examples of the modern genre at garage sales and in the cellar. 

This week's garage sale finds:

25 cents each!

They are huge!

People are often glad to see this stuff go. Some folks are just not modern.

Modern Print Monday: Neckties

Neckties from the 1940s and '50s

were the acme of modernism.

Some were advertised as hand-painted

as in this R monogram tie.

Many companies had a hand in the fad. Here's a tie 

signed the California Artists Guild.

Ardley of Hollywood

Hand Painted

"NYLON"

A "Studio Stencil"

Yikes!

Some look airbrushed

Others cut from continuous pattern yardage

but many feature a graphic designed

to fit the form, probably silk-screened.

Here's a crazy quilt from an online auction

The variety of embroidery stitches might make one think it was late

19th century...

but the necktie shape and imagery is a giveaway to mid-20th-century.

1951 ad from the Cutter Cravat company of Chicago

The copy:

"Styled for You!

A Confident...Secure...Right Feeling is yours when

you wear a Cutter Cravat Artist Original. Friends will

compliment your taste."

And people ask why my generation rejected middle class culture.

Well, not all of us.