Cali Comforts

Midcentury California design hits the Peabody Essex Museum

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Mad Men’s California sojourns have been a bit of a downer. A sunnier take on the state at midcentury waits at the Peabody Essex Museum in California Design, 1930-1965: Living in a Modern Way. On view through July 6, the exhibit features 250-plus objects—a sleek 1964 Studebaker Avanti, bathing suits made from parachute silk, an ice crusher that looks like a weapon wielded by a comic book hero, early Barbie dolls, cheery ceramics, clean-lined furniture and other mementos of movements that aimed to democratize design, uniting craft and mass production. We tapped curator Austen Barron Bailly for insight into a few of the exhibit’s furnishings—and an ideal of beautiful, comfortable living that resonated far beyond the Golden State.

This plywood pachyderm designed by Charles and Ray Eames may be a charming toy, but it owes its existence to war. California was at the forefront of defense manufacturing, and the molded plywood techniques the Eames developed while designing lightweight leg splints for the Navy during WWII later featured in their famed chairs and this 1945 piece. “To appropriate what had been war materials to the home and ordinary life was a huge goal,” Bailly says.

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“There was this popular syndicated columnist, Eugenia Sheppard,” Bailly says, “and she wrote that the cocktail table was the heart, soul and center of the home, the one piece of furniture that a housewife might splurge on.” This multifunctional specimen circa 1950 certainly seems worth a splurge. Designed by Milo Baughman, it’s equipped with compartments for cigarettes, magazines and even a planter.

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“One of the things about the mindset of Californians,” Bailly says, “was the freedom to experiment and embrace different influences,” notably from Latin America and Asia. Consider this 1968 Lotus Chair designed by Miller Yee Fong for Tropi-Cal, known for sculptural, pool-deck-ready rattan furniture. As Bailly puts it, “The indoor/outdoor living, the color, the texture, the kind of informality and casual glamour really is what distinguishes the notion of California modern.”

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Richard Neutra, Kaufmann House, Palm Springs, 1946. Photo by Julius Shulman, 1947. Getty Research Institute. © J. Paul Getty Trust . Used with permission. Julius Shulman Photography Archive, Research Library at the Getty Research Institute (2004.R.10); Charles Eames and Ray Eames. Molded Plywood Division, Evans Products Company (Venice, 1943-47). Elephant, 1945. Eames Collection, LLC. © The Eames Foundation. Courtesy Eames Office LLC (eamesoffice.com); Cocktail Table, circa 1950. Collection of Jill Grey. Photo © Museum Associates/LACMA; Lotus Chair, 1968. Manufactured in Hong Kong. Gift of Fong Brothers Co. Photo © Museum Associates/LACMA. 


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