Arthur Umanoff Bar Height Swivel Stools

Name: Arthur Umanoff Bar Height Swivel Stools
Brand: Arthur Umanoff
Price: 1850 USD
Availability: InStock

About the Item

We have 2 of these rare rotating, counter height stools by Arthur Umanoff. These stools are thoughtfully crafted with a steel frame, birch seat, and jute wrapped around the seat back, all materials quite typical for Umanoff’s designs. Arthur Umanoff (1923–1985) was an American-born Industrial designer, noted for his contribution to the American Mid-Century Modern movement. Upon graduating from New York’s prestigious Pratt Institute and the American School of Design in the beginning of the 1950s, Umanoff began collaborating with Post Modern Ltd, a New York design company that produced and sold modernist wrought iron and wood designs. Throughout the 1960s, he worked closely with the furniture manufacturer Shaver Howard, who put many of his furniture designs into production. He also designed clocks for Howard Miller.

Creator:

Arthur Umanoff (Designer)

Dimensions:

Height: 35 in (88.9 cm)Width: 18.5 in (46.99 cm)Depth: 17.5 in (44.45 cm)Seat Height: 28.5 in (72.39 cm)

Style:

Mid-Century Modern (Of the Period)

Materials and Techniques:

Birch,Cut Steel,Jute

Place of Origin:

United States

Period:

1960-1969

Date of Manufacture:

1960

Condition:

Wear consistent with age and use. Minor fading.

Seller Location:

Los Angeles, CA

Reference Number:

1stDibs: LU1374235638422

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Shop All Arthur Umanoff

Arthur Umanoff

Though much of Arthur Umanoff’s furniture is marked by a no-frills simplicity common in American mid-century modern design, his work is anything but one-note. Over the course of a prolific career, Umanoff designed everything from case pieces to candleholders to dining chairs in iron, leather, walnut, wicker and more. With furnishings for a broad range of manufacturers throughout the ’50s, ’60s, ’70s and early ’80s, Umanoff continued a thread of sculptural elegance and textural sensitivity through his designs.

After graduating from Pratt Institute in the early 1950s, Umanoff experimented mostly with wood furniture before landing a job at Post Modern Ltd, a New York manufacturer of wrought-iron furniture. There he produced furnishings that married wrought iron with wood and plastic, creating functional pieces free of utilitarian bulkiness. Umanoff continued his experimentation with mixed materials through a partnership with Shaver Howard, for whom he designed wine racks in combinations of iron, leather and wicker.

When Shaver Howard bought Boyeur Scott, Umanoff conceived several furniture designs for the brand, including the 1964 Granada collection, whose curlicue iron bases, visible through glass tops, stand out as some of his most ornate and decorative work. Indeed, much of Umanoff’s oeuvre is far more simplistic, like iron-and-pine armchairs for The Elton Co. or low-backed, slatted-seat barstools with slender iron legs for Raymor.

Umanoff was fluent, too, in the more sumptuous modernism of the era: In the mid-1960s, he designed the 2405 and 4449 armchairs for Madison Furniture Industries. Popular in offices, the walnut-framed, leather-upholstered seats, which could have been mistaken for the seductive Scandinavian modern seating of the era, were reportedly the jumping-off point for Captain Kirk’s iconic seat on Star Trek.

Even as he is among the mid-century modern designers you may not know, with work across such a range of styles and manufacturers (most no longer in business), Umanoff, who died in 1985, leaves a legacy that is fascinatingly diverse and at times enticingly elusive, making his work intriguing objects for collectors.

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