Parzinger Originals On Sale

At 1stDibs, there are many versions of the ideal parzinger originals on sale for your home. Each parzinger originals on sale for sale was constructed with extraordinary care, often using fabric, metal and textile. You’ve searched high and low for the perfect parzinger originals on sale — we have versions that date back to the 20th Century alongside those produced as recently as the 20th Century are available. When you’re browsing for the right parzinger originals on sale, those designed in Mid-Century Modern styles are of considerable interest.

The average selling price for a parzinger originals on sale at 1stDibs is $7,995, while they’re typically $3,656 on the low end and $35,400 for the highest priced.

When in the 1930s Tommi Parzinger won a trip to the United States through a poster design competition for a German steamship company, it led to him to become one of the country’s most influential mid-century modern furniture designers with his company, Parzinger Originals. 

Born in 1903 in Munich, Germany, into an artistic family, Parzinger studied ceramics, painting and design at the Kunstgewerbeschule. In 1932, he entered and won a poster design contest for the Norddeutscher Lloyd steamship company. The grand prize was a voyage to the United States. By the time Parzinger returned to Germany, unrest leading to World War II was emerging, and he was pressured to join the Nazi party. Parzinger fled back to the United States and settled in New York City, where he pursued a career in interior design.

His first job in the country was with Manhattan trendsetter Rena Rosenthal, who employed him to design household silverware for her famed Madison Avenue store. Later, he became the lead designer for the Charak Furniture Company. In the 1940s, with the help of business and life partner Donald Cameron, Parzinger opened his showroom, Parzinger Originals, on East 57th Street in Manhattan.

Throughout his career, Parzinger produced up to 30 pieces a year for his namesake company. They included refined, elegant and meticulously designed end tables, side tables, consoles, floor lamps, table lamps, seating and mirrors. His signature creations were commodes and credenzas featuring beautifully ornamented hardware and lacquer finishes. His clients included Marilyn Monroe, Billy Baldwin and some of New York’s wealthiest families, like the DuPonts and Rockefellers.

Parzinger also collaborated with other furniture companies, including Salterini, Hofstatter, Lightolier, Reed & Barton and Dorlyn. In the last 15 years of his life, he shifted his focus from furniture to Expressionist painting.

When Parzinger died in 1981, Parzinger Originals was left to Donald Cameron, who fought to protect Parzinger’s design legacy from copycats and reproductions. Nevertheless, Parzinger Originals soon closed. 

In recent years, Parzinger Originals furniture has enjoyed a resurgence in popularity among interior designers and collectors of mid-century modern and modern furniture. Pieces from Parzinger Originals are in the collections of the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum.

On 1stDibs, discover a range of Parzinger Originals case pieces and storage cabinets, tables, lighting and more.

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

• Eames lounge chair
• Nelson daybed
• Florence Knoll sofa
• Egg chair
• Womb chair
• Noguchi coffee table
• Barcelona chair

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.