This is first part of a series that spotlights one of this year’s most popular design trends, mid-century modern chairs and furniture. We’re big fans of this era of design and style, and love to see so much attention being brought back to it in the world of interior design. There’s a wide range of variety and styles that comprise mid-century modern home furnishings and we wanted to give you a brief primer into some of the most iconic examples of mid-century modern chairs.

670 Lounge Chair

This beautiful lounge chair is an icon of mid-century modern style, designed by Charles and Ray Eames, this shine to comfort captures both a feel of classic Americana mixed with a sleek futurism, but still functional enough to find a place in the family room of many homes in the 1960’s.

BALL CHAIR

At the opposite end of the spectrum are these space-age pods that were epitome of 1960’s futurism. The Ball Chair by Eero Aarnio looks like it could find a home on the set of a Stanley Kubrick movie just as easily as it could blend into a swinging bachelor pad, with a beautiful hifi record console playing an Esquivel record.

LC3

From time to time you’ll run across some of these chairs still in use, once a popular waiting room set, that many have knocked off into close but less than perfect copies. The low back is the trademark of these Pierre Jeanneret and Charlotte Perriand designed masterworks. What they are is a masterpiece of comfort, once you sit down in one of these, not only will you not want to get up, you will find it very challenging to go against your better instincts to ever remove your body from these mid-century modern miniature sofas.

WOMB CHAIR

The mid-century modern designers were extremely into aesthetics, but designs like this also over-delivered in the comfort department. Designer Eero Saarinen created this chair as a commission for a fellow designer Florence Knoll who wanted a chair that would give her the experience of sitting in a basket full of pillows. There’s something about this era of designers that was a lot of fun, they took chances, sometimes creating designs that were totally unlike anything that had come before.

EGG CHAIR

It’s hard to think of mid-century modern chairs without these egg chairs by Arne Jacobsen, a staple of 1960’s television and a chair your probably associate with some of your favorite shows of the era. This chair was designed to be a dramatic frame for whoever sits in it, to be a complement and a striking setting for whoever occupies them. Arne Jacobsen believed deeply that a chair should not only work as a functional piece of furniture, but also very importantly as a work of art.

If you liked these, make sure you check out our interpretation of the mid-century modern chair, we call it The Buckley Listening Chair.