R Henriques

More often than not, vintage mid-century Brazilian furniture designs, with their gleaming wood, soft leathers and inviting shapes, share a sensuous, unique quality that distinguishes them from the more rectilinear output of American and Scandinavian makers of the same era.

Commencing in the 1940s and '50s, a group of architects and designers transformed the local cultural landscape in Brazil, merging the modernist vernacular popular in Europe and the United States with the South American country's traditional techniques and indigenous materials.

Key mid-century influencers on Brazilian furniture design include natives Oscar Niemeyer, Sergio Rodrigues and José Zanine Caldas as well as such European immigrants as Joaquim Tenreiro, Jean Gillon and Jorge Zalszupin. These creators frequently collaborated; for instance, Niemeyer, an internationally acclaimed architect, commissioned many of them to furnish his residential and institutional buildings.

The popularity of Brazilian modern furniture has made household names of these designers and other greats. Their particular brand of modernism is characterized by an émigré point of view (some were Lithuanian, German, Polish, Ukrainian, Portuguese, and Italian), a preference for highly figured indigenous Brazilian woods, a reverence for nature as an inspiration and an atelier or small-production mentality.

Hallmarks of Brazilian mid-century design include smooth, sculptural forms and the use of native woods like rosewood, jacaranda and pequi. The work of designers today exhibits many of the same qualities, though with a marked interest in exploring new materials (witness the Campana Brothers' stuffed-animal chairs) and an emphasis on looking inward rather than to other countries for inspiration.

Find a collection of vintage Brazilian furniture on 1stDibs that includes chairs, sofas, tables and more.

Prints are works of art produced in multiple editions. Though several copies of a specific artwork can exist, collectors consider antique and vintage prints originals when they have been manually created by the artist or are “impressions” that are part of the artist’s intent for the work.

Modern artists use a range of printmaking techniques to produce different types of prints such as relief, intaglio and planographic. Relief prints are created by cutting away a printing surface to leave only a design. Ink or paint is applied to the raised parts of the surface, and it is used to stamp or press the design onto paper or another surface. Relief prints include woodcuts, linocuts and engravings.

Intaglio prints are the opposite of relief prints in that they are incised into the printing surface. The artist cuts the design into a block, plate or other material and then coats it with ink before wiping off the surface and transferring the design to paper through tremendous pressure. Intaglio prints have plate marks showing the impression of the original block or plate as it was pressed onto the paper.

Artists create planographic prints by drawing a design on a stone or metal plate using a grease crayon. The plate is washed with water, then ink is spread over the plate and it adheres to the grease markings. The image is then stamped on paper to make prints.

All of these printmaking methods have an intricate process, although each can usually transfer only one color of ink. Artists use separate plates or blocks for multiple colors, and together these create one finished work of art.

Find prints ranging from the 18th- and 19th-century bird illustrations by J.C. Sepp to mid-century modern prints, as well as numerous other antique and vintage prints at 1stDibs. Browse the collection today and read about how to arrange wall art in your space.