Mid Century Modern Furniture

Two chairs positioned for Spanish royalty in a pavilion designed to be demolished. How the Barcelona Chair became modernism's most copied seating despite never actually needing to exist.

Harry Bertoia welded steel rods into a chair that's 80% empty space. Then Herman Miller sued him. The design change forced by the lawsuit became the authentication marker.

A pioneering abstract sculptor recognized the sculptural furniture she'd been creating in stone and bronze for two decades. The three Diamond Chairs Barbara Hepworth bought tell the real story of where mid-century furniture got its shapes.

Breuer bought an Adler bicycle in 1925 and asked how they bent the handlebars. The answer changed furniture manufacturing forever - if steel tubes bent like macaroni for bicycles, they'd work for chairs.