Milo Baughman Mid-Century Modern Velvet Sofa

American furniture designer Milo Baughman (1923–2003) conceived the Case sofa sometime during the 1960s, when designers and manufacturers were still experimenting with technologies and materials that had been developed during World War II. From the aircraft industry, molded plastics and aluminum became viable new options, while the Chrysler Corporation introduced spot-welding techniques for joining wood to rubber, metal and plastic. Baughman, who was born in Goodland, Kansas, but spent his formative years in Long Beach, California — which may have informed his laid-back sensibility — worked with dozens of manufacturers. The interior designer and furniture maker’s collaborations include a decades-long association with Thayer Coggin, which produced this classic modernist design. 

With its wood veneer, wool-flannel upholstery and straight metal legs, the Case sofa exudes a certain bygone masculinity that is frequently referenced as a defining characteristic of postwar culture. Fittingly, Baughman's seating — or his influence, at the very least — can be found in more than one room on the award-winning television series Mad Men, thanks to set decorators Claudette Didul and Amy Wells. The designer's work inspired the furniture created for the pristine office of Don Draper, the show’s erratic, arrogant male protagonist. Yet Baughman’s Case sofa is notable for more than its dashing good looks. Its hefty proportions and straightforward lines speak to the era’s growing prevalence of mass fabrication. That’s not to say the sofa isn’t well crafted. It simply embodies the advent of mass-market furniture as well as a new kind of status symbol.

Milo Baughman was one of the most agile and adept modern American furniture designers of the late 20th century. A prolific lecturer and writer on the benefits of good design — he taught for years at Brigham Young University — Baughman (whose often-scrambled surname is pronounced BAWF-man) focused almost exclusively on residential furnishings, such as chairs, sofas and benches. He had a particular talent for lounge chairs, perhaps the most sociable piece of furniture.

Like his fellow adoptive Californians Charles and Ray Eames, Baughman’s furniture has a relaxed and breezy air. He was famously opposed to ostentatious and idiosyncratic designs that were made to excite attention. While many of his chair designs are enlivened by such effects as tufted upholstery, Baughman tended to let his materials carry the aesthetic weight, most often relying on seating and table frames made of sturdy and sleek flat-bar chromed metal, and chairs, tables and cabinets finished with highly-figured wood veneers.

Like his colleagues Karl Springer and the multifarious Pierre Cardin, Baughman’s designs are emblematic of the 1970s: sleek, sure and scintillating.

As you will see from the furniture presented on 1stDibs, Milo Baughman’s designs for the likes of Drexel Furniture, Glenn of California and — for five decades — Thayer Coggin are ably employed as either the heart of a décor or its focal point.