An assortment of gratz industries is available at 1stDibs. Frequently made of
metal,
steel and
animal skin, all gratz industries available were constructed with great care. There are all kinds of gratz industries available, from those produced as long ago as the 20th Century to those made as recently as the 21st Century. Gratz industries bearing
modern or
mid-century modern hallmarks are very popular at 1stDibs. Gratz industries have been a part of the life’s work for many furniture makers, but those produced by
Katavolos, Littel, & Kelly,
Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and
Rockwell Group are consistently popular.
Gratz industries can differ in price owing to various characteristics — the average selling price at 1stDibs is $5,400, while the lowest priced sells for $2,000 and the highest can go for as much as $15,000.
The late 19th and early 20th centuries saw sweeping social change and major scientific advances — both of which contributed to a new aesthetic: modernism. Rejecting the rigidity of Victorian artistic conventions, modernists sought a new means of expression. References to the natural world and ornate classical embellishments gave way to the sleek simplicity of the Machine Age. Architect Philip Johnson characterized the hallmarks of modernism as “machine-like simplicity, smoothness or surface [and] avoidance of ornament.”
Early practitioners of modernist design include the De Stijl (“The Style”) group, founded in the Netherlands in 1917, and the Bauhaus School, founded two years later in Germany.
Followers of both groups produced sleek, spare designs — many of which became icons of daily life in the 20th century. The modernists rejected both natural and historical references and relied primarily on industrial materials such as metal, glass, plywood, and, later, plastics. While Bauhaus principals Marcel Breuer and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe created furniture from mass-produced, chrome-plated steel, American visionaries like Charles and Ray Eames worked in materials as novel as molded plywood and fiberglass. Today, Breuer’s Wassily chair, Mies van der Rohe’s Barcelona chair — crafted with his romantic partner, designer Lilly Reich — and the Eames lounge chair are emblems of progressive design and vintage originals are prized cornerstones of collections.
It’s difficult to overstate the influence that modernism continues to wield over designers and architects — and equally difficult to overstate how revolutionary it was when it first appeared a century ago. But because modernist furniture designs are so simple, they can blend in seamlessly with just about any type of décor. Don’t overlook them.