The Magazine Antiques

By Kristina Wilson  |  

In the 1950s Eero Saarinen’s furniture designs for KnollAssociates were ubiquitous. The Womb chair and hisline of Pedestal chairs and tables appeared regularlyin shelter magazines, in advertisements, and perhaps most famously,at the end of the decade, on the cover of the May 16,1959, issue of the Saturday Evening Post (Fig. 2). NormanRockwell’s painting shows what appears to be a typical suburbanfamily on aSunday morning. The mother, twin daughters, and son,dressed forchurch and with prayer books in hand, file out of thehouse in lockstep, studiously ignoring the father, who is clearly notgoing with them. With his hair comically disheveled, wearing pajamas,slippers, and bright red robe, the father hides from hisfamily’s censure by slumping in Saarinen’s Womb chair, first designedin 1946 and put into production in 1948.

Charming and lighthearted, this image also encapsulates thecomplicated public reception of modernism in the 1950s. Atfirst glance, the Womb chair seems to suggest a daringnonconformity. The father is not only refusing to go tochurch, but his pose is excessively unbuttoned—especiallyin contrast to the marching-band formation ofthe mother and children, who not only walk in stepbut also carry their prayer books in almost identicalfashion. Modernism also seems to challenge thefeminized order of the domestic sphere. The chairallows the man of the house to escape his wife’sorder, and to indulge in his own leisure;it is a womb that shields him from his wife. (The youngboy is, notably, a bit ambivalent about his place in thisdrama. He walks in step with his mother, but his eyeslook in the same general direction as his father’s.)

Yet upon further reflection, the Womb chair’srole in Rockwell’s family drama is more nuanced.The modern house in which this scenetakes place (indicated by the plate-glass window andthe other modern furnishings, including a chair byCharles and Ray Eames in the lower left corner) is hometo both the father and the church-going mother. InRockwell’s world modernism has settled into suburbiaand has become a style that serves both the mother’spiety and the father’s stab at irreverence. We might liketo think that the father is rebelling against domesticorder, but in fact both he and modernism itself havebeen domesticated. After all, on another day, it is justas likely that the mother mightbe curled up in this chair.

If Rockwell’s magazinecover represents the domesticationof Saarinen’s chair, it marksthe final phase in a decade-longproject of convincing postwarconsumers to buy this furniture.In the early 1950s, modernism,with its lack of historical precedentsin both materials anddesign, was bound to unnervepotential buyers. In explainingthe aesthetic, magazines routinelylinked the new furnitureto discussions about simplifyinglife and opening up the newsmall houses of the suburbanlandscape. By the later 1950s,however, it was no longer necessaryto justify it. The architects,designers, and the biomorphic,irregular forms that had come to defi ne their designs hadacquired iconic status. Saarinen’s furniture was a key partof this shift in rhetoric.

The Womb chair was officially launched at Knoll Associates’New York showroom inMay 1948. Although it is partof the 70 Series—which includesan upholstered side chair andarmchair, both of which becamepopular office pieces in the1950s—its unusual shape andname has meant that the chairis usually seen as a singularobject. Made of a technologicallyinnovative molded fi berglassbase, and then covered with athin layer of foam rubber andupholstery, the chair looks likea fl at disk that has been pinchedand bent to wrap around thehuman figure.

From the time of its introduction,the Womb chair has been associated with informalityand comfort: as the New York Times explained whenthe design was fi rst introduced, it allowed for “curlingup with legs tucked under,” adding a quotation fromFlorence Knoll who described it as the “curling chair.”1Brian Lutz has documented the many confl icting storiesabout the origins of the chair’s name. What does seemclear is that the name was in use among the designer andhis collaborators throughout its development. Saarinenhimself, in what was undoubtedly a tongue-in-cheekremark, explained that “its unoffi cial name is the Womb chair because it was designed on the theory that a greatnumber of people have never really felt comfortable andsecure since they left the womb.”2 Clearly the very word womb, so different from the intimidating technical vocabularyof modern design, seems well suited to disarmingconsumer resistance: a chair that satisfi ed such abasic human need could not be all that threatening.

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