Louis Vuitton Hand Gloves

Known for their sleek, sophisticated interiors and modern, sculptural furniture, Canadian designers George Yabu and Glenn Pushelberg, who collaborate as Yabu Pushelberg, continue to push the boundaries of contemporary style. “We’re always focused on what’s next and continually search for the new and innovative as we strive to conceive the memorable experiences of tomorrow,” says the couple and design duo.

Yabu and Pushelberg met when they were students at Ryerson University’s School of Interior Design (now Toronto Metropolitan University), in Toronto, graduating in 1976. They didn’t meet again until bumping into each other a few years later while both were looking for studio spaces. That chance meeting led to the founding of the company Yabu Pushelberg, in 1980, with a focus on interior design.

Their first major project was in 1984, designing Canadian fashion retailer Club Monaco’s first stores in Toronto. Yabu Pushelberg evolved from strictly interior design to adopt a multidisciplinary approach in subsequent years. The firm has since grown to a team of 100-plus creatives and professionals with offices in Toronto and New York, designing buildings, landscapes, interiors, lighting, graphics, objects and furniture. 

Yabu and Pushelberg have collaborated with many notable designers and international furniture manufacturers. For Italian silverware maker Pampaloni, the duo designed a series of tableware, serveware and home goods. Other collaborations include dining chairs for Italian manufacturer Hinge; the curvy Surf sofa for Molteni&C.; and for Glas Italia, the all-glass, bowl-shaped Nacre coffee table. Yabu Pushelberg has also designed pieces independent of partnerships. 

Yabu and Pushelberg’s list of accomplishments and accolades is extensive. They have created interiors for Midtown Manhattan’s Park Hyatt hotel, Bergdorf Goodman in New York, Lane Crawford in Hong Kong and Shanghai, the Waldorf Astoria Beijing, the Rosewood Guangzhou, Edition hotels in New York, London and Miami Beach and several boutiques for Louis Vuitton, Carolina Herrera and David Yurman. The pair were also appointed Officers of the Order of Canada for their contributions to design and have been inducted into the Interior Design Hall of Fame.

Find Yabu Pushelberg lounge chairs, sofas, stools and console tables on 1stDibs.

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.

Whether they are implemented as decorative accents or makeshift partitions to ensure privacy, antique and vintage folding screens and room dividers easily introduce sophistication and depth to any space in your home.

The earliest examples of folding screens are said to have originated in China and go back at least as far as the Han dynasty. Screens of the era were heavy structures made of wood and had hinges of cloth or leather. They were adorned with elaborate landscape paintings that were typically created on silk or paper canvases and applied directly to the screen’s panels afterward. Just as they had been in the 20th century and today, the folding screens then were recognized for both their practical and purely decorative properties.

Japanese room-divider screens were also decorated with paintings but constructed to be lightweight and mobile. They took on considerable event-based importance when the structures gained popularity in the East Asian country, as the folding screens were used in performing arts such as concerts, tea ceremonies and more. Later, artists elsewhere warmed to folding screens and sought to create their own.

In European countries such as France, where they were known as paravent, folding screens began to materialize in apartments in Paris, gaining favor with the likes of pioneering couturier Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel, who is said to have accrued more than 30 and used them as a precursor to what we now know as wallpaper.

On 1stDibs, find a wide range of antique and vintage folding screens and room dividers, which, given their history, may do a better job of bringing people and cultures together in your home than sectioning off a space. Search by material to find options in metal, fabric or wood, or browse by style for mid-century modern designs and examples from the Art Deco era.