111 East
DESIGN
If someone had told me during a dreary New York snow, as I watched the flakes accumulating from my overloaded desk in an Upper West Side office, that I would someday live in Palm Springs, I would have done cartwheels all the way to the elevator and gone home to pack. With no knowledge of who designed them, I would have imagined dining under a George Nelson Bubble lamp, marveling at the swimming pool from a sofa made of circular cushions, and working (when in the mood) from a simple Swag Leg desk, free of clutter with its tidy row of back cubbies and lightly perched atop metal-tube legs. In my entry? Nelson’s slatted Platform Bench tucked under a Ball Clock on the wall. Ah, so Palm Springs.
Whether we surround ourselves with vintage George Nelson originals, his 350-plus reproductions by Herman Miller, or even the knockoffs (another story altogether), Nelson (1908–1986) indeed resides in the desert along with us.
You can see him, sit on him, and buy him locally. Modern vacation rentals often list Nelson furnishings as an amenity, and historic hotels woo guests with his designs. Both the Orbit In and Del Marcos Hotel will leave the George Nelson light on for you. Just Fabulous in Palm Springs customizes “Nelson-inspired” clocks with 12 wooden balls in your choice of colors. Artists in local galleries, including Shag and Nat Reed, often slip Nelson pieces into their paintings. And every vintage showroom from Uptown to Cathedral City’s Perez Road Art and Design District has invited him through their doors only to see him swiftly depart with yet another enthusiast.
Nelson is as omnipresent in modern-day Palm Springs as he was influential in founding modernism itself and nurturing it from infancy through heyday. A Connecticut native, he studied architecture at Yale University and sold high-impact stories about architects and industrial design to journals and magazines before opening his own practice. In 1945, Nelson established himself as a designer with his first collection for Herman Miller before being invited aboard to helm the ship.
“As design director of Herman Miller from 1947 to 1972, George Nelson was instrumental in guiding the direction of design during the midcentury,” says architecture tour guide Kurt Cyr, noting that, in addition to churning out his own body of work, he cultivated designers who are now household names. “Harry Bertoia, Ray and Charles Eames, Isamu Noguchi, Alexander Girard, and Richard Schultz all designed products for Herman Miller under the supervision of Nelson.”
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY ART RESOURCE
George Nelson
The George Nelson Foundation ties it up with a bow: “As an architect, author, furniture designer, graphic designer, exhibition designer, teacher, amateur photographer, and general provocateur, George Nelson shaped the course of design in America for over four decades.” The reason he became one of the key innovators of 20th-century modern furniture, says preservationist Peter Moruzzi, is because “his work epitomizes the midcentury philosophy that less is more when crafted by the hands of a master designer.”
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY ART RESOURCE
Cigar, Crisscross, and Ball Bubble pendants
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY ART RESOURCE
Platform Bench
At dinner parties or driving around town, it’s almost impossible not to glimpse a Nelson, or at least an imitation. “The Zen-like simplicity of his designs blend with the desert’s broad, welcoming open spaces,” Moruzzi remarks. “He is one of the designers whose work continues to be harmonious with the midcentury houses of the desert.”
From the distinct silhouette of a Cigar floor lamp that sets a reading nook aglow or a large Ball pendant floating over a dining table, “it seems that there is at least one of his pieces in every home,” says Cyr, who has a wall clock in his studio, loves Nelson’s daybeds, and appreciates the “lightness and delicacy” of his furnishings. “The hairpin or thin tapering legs allow light to pass underneath, and they appear to dance across the floor.”
Among local dealers and collectors, Nelson is admired most often for his “simplicity of form,” as Courtney Newman, owner of Modern Way, puts it. “In a midcentury modern architectural home with clean lines, his low and lean pieces fit right — without blocking views thorough the glass.” Of the many Nelsons he has sold, those “simple, useful” benches go right away.
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY ART RESOURCE
Clock, circa 1951
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY ART RESOURCE
Coconut Lounge Chair
While it can be hard to source those revered originals, plenty of fans buy new Nelsons from Herman Miller or settle for his more common vintage pieces. “Most Nelson furniture was mass-produced and intended for the masses, so it is not ultra-rare,” Newman intones. “But right now I have an amazing Nelson Modern Management Group desk that is right out of Mad Men.”
Nelson’s work encompassed both serious furniture and playful napkin doodles that found their way into production. Clocks shaped like owls and elephants made for children in 1947 are still manufactured in Poland by Vitra. The Ball and Eye Clocks are actually attributed to other designers “for George Nelson Associates” (Irving Harper and Lucia DeRespinis, respectively). Yet many know them only as Nelson’s, if they associate a name with them at all. Design is like vodka: Some will ask for it by name; others know what they like only when they taste it.
“I am using and still drawn toward the timeless, less flamboyant American designs by George Nelson and Florence Knoll among a select few others,” says designer Brad Dunning. “Nelson’s Marshmallow Sofa and all those crazy but genius clocks aside, a lot of his designs were more sophisticated, making them easy to mix in with other periods and styles. They don’t declare, ‘midcentury!’ as loudly or obtrusively as some of his peers’ more distinct and locked-in-the-period designs. They are serene and quiet, simple and direct, not overly demonstrative of a particular whim or moment in time. They’re not trying to steal the scene.”
“They are serene and quiet, simple and direct, not overly demonstrative of a particular whim or moment in time. They’re not trying to steal the scene.” Brad Dunning
A La Mod recently sold a Nelson sofa that was reupholstered, which they say usually enhances the piece. Even their clients with a keen eye for the 1970s or a soft spot for the Memphis design movement of the ’80s will consider a place for Nelson’s “good lines.” “Things go in and out of fashion,” says James Claude, co-owner of the shop with Miguel Linares. “Heywood Wakefield got overdone here; we won’t even bring it in. With a good original Nelson piece, there is still a market and I think there will always be, just like for Vladimir Kagan and Charles Hollis Jones.”
Claude says Nelson’s timeless work that manages not to appear affixed to one period or genre augments his knack for utility. “His sofas were the right scale, the right length. A lot of the 1950s and 1960s pieces were smaller than today’s furniture. Nelson made a nice size to seat four or five comfortably. In many of his choices, down to accents and dresser pulls, he was way ahead of this time.”
PHOTOGRAPH BY COOPER HEWITT, SMITHSONIAN DESIGN CENTER/ART RESOURCE
Home office desk, circa 1948
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY ART RESOURCE
Atomic Clock, 1949
Back in Vista Las Palmas, collectors and musicians Joan and Gary Gand count as part of their Nelson assortment a modular CSS comprehensive storage system that claims an entire wall of their living room. “It’s the biggest one there is,” Gary says. What began with a few units, called “bays,” in their former Swiss Miss home expanded when they moved into the epic Morse House built in 1961. “I figured out that nine bays would fit in here perfectly edge to edge.” Now
27 feet long, three combined systems incorporate shelving for midcentury glass and blue Italian Bitossi pottery with drawers, cabinets, LP storage, and a rare two-sided desk where the couple works. “Nelson was the master,” Gary affirms. “I call him ‘the Walt Disney of design.’ The clocks are easily collectible. We probably have a half a dozen in our houses and condos. For us, he made modernism fun.”
For many in Palm Springs, Nelson’s sensibility and their own may have fused into one. “I will never tire of the classic Platform bench, and, as ubiquitous as they are, I’ve never met a Bubble lamp I didn’t like,” Dunning says. “His Thin Edge series are as elegant of pieces of American furniture as have ever been designed.”
Newman has a theory: “I think Nelson’s appeal has lasted so long because he was true to his design beliefs and did not compromise,” he says. “Part of the popularity is nostalgia, and part is just great design.”