^[1]Paul McCobb (June 5, 1917 – March 10, 1969), like a few other famous American designers, did not start out creating furniture. He desired the life of an artist and studied drawing and painting at the Vesper George School of Art in Boston, Massachusetts. Although in actuality art and design intimately embrace, art schools rarely stress the general nature of some creative spirits. Fine art epitomizes the design process except that in most cases form does not necessarily follow function. The furniture designer, especially one that intends on mass appeal and production, must not only produce alluring, but practical and useful, also.

 

McCobb which produced an incredible number of furniture designs that captivated a mass audience, fell in reputation to the snobbery of the elites who have a difficult time respecting the opinions of the mass of people. However, McCobb furniture, which has the amazing advantage of production in very large numbers, has seen a resurgence in popularity and the recognition that his design influence was widespread among furniture producers. It should be noted that he not only created furniture, but his firm, Paul McCobb Design Associates, produced designs for many other things such as televisions, dishes and clocks.

 

Quite often it is said that McCobb was not revolutionary, but amalgamated a bit of Internationalism, Scandinavian design and parts from the past in creating his furniture. This maybe an overstatement because of one chair design that resembles a Windsor chair and the fact that most chairs due to their function and the incredible number of variations in form will in some way resemble another, at least in part, plus also his prolific amount of work contributes to this notion.

 

McCobb is known for the Planner Group and the Directional Group of furniture designs, one supposedly more sophisticated than the other. In this case, the latter because of the use of more expensive materials. Some of his most successful categories of designs is his wall storage systems. Better than most for the time and even stacking up well against contemporary ideas today, his wall storage can only be categorized as excellent.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Some Paul McCobb Chairs:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sofas:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tables:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Desks, Credenza and Chests:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Others:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The amazing number of objects produced by McCobb dwarfs those of other designers. Only a small sample of the body of his work is represented here. His range of ideas is similarly expansive. The egalitarian notion of producing furniture and objects for everyone deserves more than the disdain of elites and more the adulation of those who love his products. One only needs to check the prices of McCobb furniture on the Internet to realize that McCobb was not only successful during his time, but also in the present due to their appealing nature.

 

For further information:

 

New York Times article on McCobb

 

Facebook Page

 

Paul McCobb on Wikipedia

HBosler

Self-Portrait in Grey

 

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