s we embrace new designers, it is important to note that without the pre-WWII arts and craft movement of the 30’s and 40’s, we would not have “contemporary design” as we know it today. Paramount to paving the way for uncluttered light-filled spaces with aesthetically pleasing furniture, subtle and luxurious textiles, and simplicity in design was T.H. Robjohn-Gibbings (otherwise known as Gibby), indisputably a catalyst who brought contemporary design to mainstream America in the twentieth century. He was a brilliant scholar, writer, and wit, who was also opinionated, outspoken and self-confident. He was destined to liberate the traditional repetitive interiors before the war, to refreshingly light, contemporary designs.

Terence Harold Robsjohn-Gibbings was born in England in 1905, and possibly the creator of his own name, T.H. Robsjohn-Gibbings. He once remarked “The slow growth of an imaginary hyphen in one’s name is an indelible sign of social progress”. He attended Liverpool and London University, obtaining a B.S. in Architecture. Afterwards, he worked briefly for a naval architect designing ocean liner interiors. In 1925-26 he became the art director for British International Pictures at Elstree Studios in Essex England.

He joined Charles Duveen, an interior designer and brother of legendary art dealer Lord Joseph Duveen, in his London firm. In 1929, Charles took “Gibby” to New York to sell expensive paneling and Elizabethan and Jacobean antiques, in all probability selling to the same clients as his brother. It is conceivable that his friendship with Cecil Beaton started with an introduction by the Duveen brothers. Later in his career as a writer and lecturer, either Cecil Beaton or Yousuf Karsh always photographed him. He was usually depicted as an elegant aristocratic tall man with fair complexion and ginger hair. He posed with a long cigarette holder in one hand and was impeccably dressed in well-tailored double-breasted suits.

His contact with Lord Duveen no doubt had an influence and bearing on his future career. Duveen had recognized early on that wealthy and powerful Americans, despite their social positions, were culturally insecure. He convinced these giants of industry that buying priceless art works from him and donating them to public museums would immortalize their names.

After Duveen’s death in 1939, Robsjohn-Gibbings took up the baton from Duveen. Gibbings reversed the strategy, appealing to the young and rising middle class, while instilling confidence and boosting their morale. The consequences of a catastrophic World War left a young nation ready to pick up and start living their lives again but not wishing to live the same life style as their parents. Gibbings encouraged them, “These houses won’t be Cape Cod Colonial, or English, or French. They will be just plain good American Twentieth Century houses, and they will need good American Twentieth Century furniture to put inside them...It will be good, down-to-earth inexpensive contemporary furniture…So what are we waiting for? All we need is faith in ourselves as American furniture designers. We have wasted 75 years of the design of America. Let’s get on a decoration of Independence for the American house.” (Architectural Forum, V77 August 1942, p28).

He had an extensive library of decorative arts and continued to collect volumes in English, German, and French until his final days. It was due to his absorbtion in the past and his great understanding of it, that he was able to make such a dynamic contribution to the present and the future. He was fluent in all styles, but especially the styles of ancient Greece. He spent hours sketching the furniture depicted on ancient Greek vases, bronzes, and sculptures in the British Museum: “On Greek vases I saw furniture that was young untouched by time”. He measured them meticulously until he produced identical proportions of ancient Greek furniture. He reinterpreted these classical forms, making them contemporary with clean simple lines and gracefully swooping curves in blond woods. “I have always believed art should transcend the time and place of its creation. It should be lasting and universal. Art, architecture and furniture cannot be judged in an arbitrary time span labeled ‘Modern,’ each must be seen in relationship to all art, all architecture, and all furniture. Artists and designers should create in three dimension for their work to live, there must be a profound understanding of the past as well as an awareness of the present if there is to be a future.”

In 1936, he opened his own studio and showroom at 515 Madison Avenue. It had bronze doors, klismos chairs and Greek inspired furnishing on a mosaic floor against innovative white walls. It was in marked contrast to the fashionable interiors of Fifth Avenue and the summer residences at Newport ,which he referred to as “Grand Central Station with tapestries”.

“Casa Encantada” was built on land for which its owner Ms. Hilda Bolt Weber had paid $100,000. It was a Georgian style estate with Grecian influences, located in the Bel Air section of Los Angeles, high up on a hill with a stunning view of the city and surrounded by 7 acres of fountains, gardens, tennis courts and a swimming pool. It had forty three rooms, including fifteen bedrooms, and seventeen baths. Ms. Hilda Bolt, was the widowed wife of a wealthy industrialist. Within a short space of time after his demise she married her chauffeur Otto Weber. Mrs. Otto Weber realized that it would ease her passage into Hollywood society if she commissioned the foremost Interior designer in the country to design her home. Robsjohn-Gibbings was hired to design the entire interior and all its furnishings, which when completed cost over three million dollars. Between 1934-1938 he designed over 200 beautiful pieces of furniture all in blond wood, for which he had a great fondness, the furniture included classical Klismos chairs stripped to their essentials, with leather straps, elegant and dramatically simple pure lines. He created Grecian consoles incorporating seated sphinxes, library tables with Griffin monopodia, Lotus decorated gueridons, stately candelabrum and torcheres with lion paw feet. He juxtaposed luxurious upholstered contemporary seating with seventeenth century fine art of Duveen caliber. His style was synonymous with understated opulence.

By this time Gibbings already had an impressive roster of clients including such names as Doris Duke, Thelma Chrysler Foy, Elizabeth Arden, Neiman Marcus, Lily Dache, Walter Annenburg and later Greek shipping magnates Nicholas Goulandris, and Aristoltle Onassis. He quipped, “ the rich are always with us, and we should learn to enjoy them”.

In 1944, he published a best-seller “Goodbye, Mr. Chippendale,” a humorous and witty but underlying serious book in which he discusses the American preoccupation with antique furniture, and advocates a change to more modern design to complement the life styles of a young and new society. He criticized the commercial designs coming out of Grand Rapids “There is one thing and one thing only that stands between Grand Rapids and good design, and that is the hangover from antique furniture…this new generation doesn’t know what it wants, but it does know what it doesn’t want. It doesn’t want the furniture with which its parents have surrounded it… copies of antiques from Grand Rapids”.

On the other hand he considered the Bauhaus-style modernism “esoteric and bleak” and he commented that “the so-called International Style was responsible for promoting the idea that modern rooms should resemble a waiting room in a hospital and that houses should be as impersonal as parked cars.”

Also, “Modern” was not a room with chromium furniture, a cactus plant and a few abstract paintings on the wall, to resemble the anteroom of a boiler factory. Gibbings’ rooms had a aura of spaciousness, accented by luxurious materials, yet simple, restrained and unpretentious. He avoided all synthetics unless the form and the purpose of the object suggested it.

In 1945, he became an American citizen and was classified as a “Modernist Interior Designer.” Grand Rapids evidently took note of his bestselling book “Good Bye Mr. Chippendale” and Widdicomb hired Robsjohn-Gibbings as its senior designer. In August 1950 he received the Grand Rapids furniture industry’s highest honor, the Waters Award for Achievement in Design. “This is in recognition of a designer who has demonstrated the finely balanced relation between fine and practical arts… the American people are acquiring a better appreciation of the beauty and refining influences of good furniture; it relects the cultural growth of our Nation.”

Widdicomb had made a survey in 1948 which indicated that American contemporary furniture had largely been influenced by foreign designs. Wanting to keep abreast of American architecture which was producing designs suitable for the unique characteristics of American living, they employed Robsjohn-Gibbings to design a line of furniture to complement the new American architecture and new casual life style. Robsjohn-Gibbings commented, “If Thomas Jefferson visited your home, he would judge your furniture for its utility not for its antique charm”.

Robsjohn-Gibbings was included in the Museum of Modern Art’s “Good Design” exhibition and in 1962 won the Elsie de Wolfe Award given by the American Institute of Interior Design. During the 1960’s on his annual summer trip, “Gibby” and his companion Carlton Pullin met with cabinet makers Susan and Eleftherios Sardis in Greece and together they created “The Klismos Line” which is still in production today. Pullin and Gibbings published a book in 1963, “Furniture of Classical Greece,” which documented the sources for their line of furniture.

Carlton and “Gibby” both retired to Greece and in 1966 moved into an apartment with a magnificent view of the Parthenon overlooking the Acropolis. Robsjohn-Gibbings loved the sea and especially liked to take long walks along the beach in the quiet of autumn or in the winter months when the beach was not crowded. In his New York office he had displayed a small but meaningful collection of sea glass, shells, quartz and pebbles on his coffee table, treasures from these walks and reminders of the importance of solitude and that the best things in life are free.

On October 20th 1976 in his beloved Greece, Robsjohn-Gibbings died of a heart attack aged 71. In addition to his important design legacy based on his lifelong scholarship of ancient civilizations, it is interesting to note like so many masters before him, he had reverence for, and was influenced by the “engaging simplicity” of American Shaker design. He summarized the essence of their work, “as uncomplicated as a prayer, it was furniture at peace with itself and its surroundings.”

Robsjohn-Gibbings' legacy was not simply the establishment of clean and graceful lines, comfortable open living spaces with well designed and well made furniture. His contribution was that finally good design was not only for the wealthy and those who could afford it but also for the average American household. Other designers had a similar mission, social reformers like William Morris, Gustav Stickley, Elbert Hubbard and “The Roycrofters” all wanted “Art for All” but none had been able to achieve what Robsjohns-Gibbings had, the combining of great design with modern technology.

(A special thank you to Liz O'Brien and Paul Donzella for their contributions to this story.)