With its undulating, futuristic and playful form, it’s easy to see why filmmaker Stanley Kubrick chose to use Olivier Mourgue’s iconic Djinn chair in his 1968 masterpiece 2001: A Space Odyssey. But the French artist and industrial designer is known for much more than the Space Age Djinn. From his whimsical Flower floor lamps to his anthropomorphic Bouloum chair, Mourgue is renowned as an important contributor to the 1960s Pop art era of modern furniture design.

Born in Paris in 1939, Mourgue grew up in an apartment filled with Empire-style antique furniture, which he derided as having “nothing to do with life.” He later studied art at Paris’s École Boulle, graduating in 1958. He then attended the École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs.

In 1959, his former teacher at École Boulle, Marcel Merpillat, encouraged him to present a chair he designed at a competition hosted by furniture manufacturer Airborne. Airborne founder Charles Bernard was impressed by Mourgue’s design, which featured a leather-upholstered seat attached to a chrome steel frame; it was produced by the company under the name the Joker. Mourgue designed several other mid-century modern pieces for Airborne throughout the 1960s, including the Whist chaise longue, the rotund Montreal chair, the unique Cubique chair and the Djinn series, which first appeared in 1964.

In addition to Airborne, Mourgue has designed for furniture manufacturers such as Disderot and Prisunic, and collaborated with British architect and designer Sir Norman Foster and Finnish architect Juhani Pallasmaa.

Mourgue worked for Le Mobilier National to design the French Pavilion for Montreal’s Expo ‘67. In 1968, he received the International Design Award from the Institute of Interior Designers in New York for the Djinn lounge chair. He also exhibited several of his works at Expo ‘70 in Osaka, Japan.

Today, Mourgue’s pieces are part of the permanent collections at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Centre Pompidou in Paris.

On 1stDibs, discover a range of vintage Olivier Mourgue seating, lighting and more.

A Close Look at mid-century-modern Furniture

Organically shaped, clean-lined and elegantly simple are three terms that well describe vintage mid-century modern furniture. The style, which emerged primarily in the years following World War II, is characterized by pieces that were conceived and made in an energetic, optimistic spirit by creators who believed that good design was an essential part of good living.

ORIGINS OF MID-CENTURY MODERN FURNITURE DESIGN

Emerged during the mid-20th century
Informed by European modernism, Bauhaus, International style, Scandinavian modernism and Frank Lloyd Wright’s architecture
A heyday of innovation in postwar America
Experimentation with new ideas, new materials and new forms flourished in Scandinavia, Italy, the former Czechoslovakia and elsewhere in Europe

CHARACTERISTICS OF MID-CENTURY MODERN FURNITURE DESIGN

Simplicity, organic forms, clean lines
A blend of neutral and bold Pop art colors
Use of natural and man-made materials — alluring woods such as teak, rosewood and oak; steel, fiberglass and molded plywood
Light-filled spaces with colorful upholstery
Glass walls and an emphasis on the outdoors
Promotion of functionality

MID-CENTURY MODERN FURNITURE DESIGNERS TO KNOW

Charles and Ray Eames
Eero Saarinen
Milo Baughman
Florence Knoll
Harry Bertoia
Isamu Noguchi
George Nelson
Danish modernists Hans Wegner and Arne Jacobsen, whose emphasis on natural materials and craftsmanship influenced American designers and vice versa

ICONIC MID-CENTURY MODERN FURNITURE DESIGNS

VINTAGE MID-CENTURY MODERN FURNITURE ON 1STDIBS

The mid-century modern era saw leagues of postwar American architects and designers animated by new ideas and new technology. The lean, functionalist International-style architecture of Le Corbusier and Bauhaus eminences Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Walter Gropius had been promoted in the United States during the 1930s by Philip Johnson and others. New building techniques, such as “post-and-beam” construction, allowed the International-style schemes to be realized on a small scale in open-plan houses with long walls of glass.

Materials developed for wartime use became available for domestic goods and were incorporated into mid-century modern furniture designs. Charles and Ray Eames and Eero Saarinen, who had experimented extensively with molded plywood, eagerly embraced fiberglass for pieces such as the La Chaise and the Womb chair, respectively.

Architect, writer and designer George Nelson created with his team shades for the Bubble lamp using a new translucent polymer skin and, as design director at Herman Miller, recruited the Eameses, Alexander Girard and others for projects at the legendary Michigan furniture manufacturer.

Harry Bertoia and Isamu Noguchi devised chairs and tables built of wire mesh and wire struts. Materials were repurposed too: The Danish-born designer Jens Risom created a line of chairs using surplus parachute straps for webbed seats and backrests.

The Risom lounge chair was among the first pieces of furniture commissioned and produced by legendary manufacturer Knoll, a chief influencer in the rise of modern design in the United States, thanks to the work of Florence Knoll, the pioneering architect and designer who made the firm a leader in its field. The seating that Knoll created for office spaces — as well as pieces designed by Florence initially for commercial clients — soon became desirable for the home.

As the demand for casual, uncluttered furnishings grew, more mid-century furniture designers caught the spirit.

Classically oriented creators such as Edward Wormley, house designer for Dunbar Inc., offered such pieces as the sinuous Listen to Me chaise; the British expatriate T.H. Robsjohn-Gibbings switched gears, creating items such as the tiered, biomorphic Mesa table. There were Young Turks such as Paul McCobb, who designed holistic groups of sleek, blond wood furniture, and Milo Baughman, who espoused a West Coast aesthetic in minimalist teak dining tables and lushly upholstered chairs and sofas with angular steel frames.

As the collection of vintage mid-century modern chairs, dressers, coffee tables and other furniture for the living room, dining room, bedroom and elsewhere on 1stDibs demonstrates, this period saw one of the most delightful and dramatic flowerings of creativity in design history.

Finding the Right lounge-chairs for You

While this specific seating is known to all for its comfort and familiar form, the history of how your favorite antique or vintage lounge chair came to be is slightly more ambiguous.

Although there are rare armchairs dating back as far as the 17th century, some believe that the origins of the first official “lounge chair” are tied to Hungarian modernist designer-architect Marcel Breuer. Sure, Breuer wasn’t exactly reinventing the wheel when he introduced the Wassily lounge chair in 1925, but his seat was indeed revolutionary for its integration of bent tubular steel.

Officially, a lounge chair is simply defined as a “comfortable armchair,” which allows for the shape and material of the furnishings to be extremely diverse. Whether or not chaise longues make the cut for this category is a matter of frequent debate.

The Eames lounge chair, on the other hand, has come to define somewhat of a universal perception of what a lounge chair can be. Introduced in 1956, the Eames lounger (and its partner in cozy, the ottoman) quickly became staples in television shows, prestigious office buildings and sumptuous living rooms. Venerable American mid-century modern designers Charles and Ray Eames intended for it to be the peak of luxury, which they knew meant taking furniture to the next level of style and comfort. Their chair inspired many modern interpretations of the lounge — as well as numerous copies.

On 1stDibs, find a broad range of unique lounge chairs that includes everything from antique Victorian-era seating to vintage mid-century modern lounge chairs by craftspersons such as Hans Wegner to contemporary choices from today’s innovative designers.