The Goldstein Museum

The Goldstein Museum Gallery exhibits office furniture since the early 1940’s to 1970’s. Charles and Ray Eames designed and make lounge chairs, reclining chairs, cabinets and desks. Most the chairs are molded plywood and rounded on the edges. The chairs with the rounded edges remind me of the wooden school desks in the late 1980’s to early 1990’s. Even today, most school chairs are made of plastic and not wood anymore but the seats still have the rounded edges. Indoor and outdoor reclining chair were designed for comfort with a pillow to place a person’s head. A matching ottoman for the feet to rest on. They used calfskin for a plywood chair which is pretty stylish. Their furniture designs were dated since the early 1940’s and helped shaped the value of furniture designs in the office and home.

George Nelson’s designs are dated late 1940’s to the 1970’s. He designs furniture for specific uses such as desks for typewriting, phone desks, tray tables, and loveseats. The blue loveseat is made of foam cushions in circles and is probably very comfortable when we sit on it. The communications center is a desk with a phone placed on the top left of the desk. I’d say that George wanted to change the way furniture looked. Usually, furniture is for people to sit on or work. But he designed furniture to look fashionably different from what people are used to seeing and at the same time it is comfortable furniture for the body. George Nelson’s role at Herman Miller was to design furniture in American modernism.

The overall message of the Herman Miller’s company is to get real. According to Herman Miller “Good Design” is the quality in furniture. Furniture are designed to give an office space extra room and help in work production. Herman Miller designs create comfort furniture and assists in an organized work space for his clients.

The Charles and Ray Eames furniture design, which caught my eye was the lounge chair with the brown-white calf skin over molded plywood with chrome legs. It is amazing with the idea of calfskin on plywood in the 1950’s. It is something different and at the same time one of a kind. The red dyed molded plywood lounge chair was interesting because of its bright color and looked like a modern style. Like, it is a chair that we would still see today but was made and created in 1947. The loveseat or marshmallow sofa designed by George Nelson caught my eye because of it’s nice color and circled foam cushions. It looked nice but made me wonder if it would be comfortable to sit on with so many circles. Since people are shaped differently from each other. They make sure that the chairs are comfortable to sit in because people use and need furniture everyday. I enjoyed the exhibit because I didn’t realize that people do put a lot of thought into designing furniture.