MODERN FURNITURE
ITS DESIGN AND CONSTRUCTION
Mario Dal Fabbro
Mario Dal Fabbro: MODERN FURNITURE: ITS DESIGN AND CONSTRUCTION. New York: Reinhold Publishing Corp. 1949. Fifth printing from 1952. Quarto. Brown cloth boards decorated in black. Photo illustrated dust jacket. 158 [16] pp. Diagrams and photographs. Board corners lightly pushed. Dust jacket lightly rubbed and spotted with mild edgewear—including a couple of short closed tears— to top edge. Interior unmarked and very clean. Out-of-print. A nearly fine copy in a very good or better dust jacket.
9.25 x 12.25 hardcover book with 174 pages and well-documented examples and plans for building modern furniture designs. Includes information on woodworking, basic joints, plywood and curves, covering edges/panels, doors, shelves, drawers. other materials, chairs and upholstery. An excellent reference volume.
“. . . Mr. Dal Fabbro gives us, in drawings and photos, a unique bird's-eye view of current design trends in furniture and equipment. His book should prove a useful tool to every professional concerned with today's architecture. As well, he has taken care of the needs of the amateur craftsman with "exploded" drawings that act as a guide to those interested in furniture building as a hobby.” — Morris Ketchum Jr.
Contents include:
- Stools: “The simplest form of chair is the stool. Of those you will find various solutions adaptable to other uses aside from the normal such as the folding, and other types which may also be used as tables, highstools, stepladder, raised and circular stools. We notice the evolution of the simple stool to its various and complex solutions, but each solution responds to a specified scope. This same procedure is to be found in other pieces of furniture to meet the varied tastes of mankind.”
- Chairs: “There are many solutions applied to the chair that involve special characteristics of design and quality of material for its construction. Although metal has made great strides in replacing wood in construction, the future may make possible further development by the use of plastic, metal, and wood, all blended in a single element. Among the particular solutions for chairs, the best results are attained in the folding and stacking type. The stacking type, adaptable for manufacture in metal, has met with considerable demand for use in public places. “
- Armchairs: “What has been said about the basic concept of the chair also can be said about the armchair. Its characteristic side arms permit various solutions of chair movement.”
- Lounges
- Rocking Armchairs: “Included in this group are the lounge chair, the folding armchair, and the rocker. The latter with its varied solutions for rocking has been more fully developed in America than in Europe. Many systems and types such as the rocking swing, rocking arm-chair, and the plain old-fashioned rocker — all with characteristic solutions — have the same basic principle. “
- Sofas: “The feature of these are their convertability into beds. The sectional sofa or pieces may form a normal sofa, or may be arranged in many interesting angular and curved forms. “
- Tables: “A number of solutions with special characteristics are shown in this group. Included in the description is the type of material used in their construction, such as metal, marble, wood, and other special compositions. The group consists of small folding tables in metal and wood, useful as bed-side tables, reading tables, or coffee tables. Their general characteristics are folding legs, reversible tops, re-movable trays, stacking type, and those which may be aligned to two or more elements. “
- Coffee Tables
- Bar Tables
- Game Tables
- Kitchen Tables: “The dining, kitchen, and ironing board tables have their characteristic solutions to provide maximum length.”
- Typewriter Stands
- Desks
- Bookcases
- Telephone Cabinets
- Service Carts and Bar Cabinets
- Bedroom Furniture: “ In this group are the normal and varied interpretation of the closing and stacking type of beds. The most practical use for the wardrobe bed is that it can be folded either horizontally or vertically, and when closed it resembles a wardrobe. The sofa beds have their characteristic of serving a dual purpose: sofa by day and bed by night.”
- Kitchen Furniture
- Wardrobes
- ”The sixteen page supplement at the end of this book was designed to help the amateur and home craftsman to design, understand, build, and experiment with original furniture solutions of his own. [See box directly below.] By building some of the pieces suggested in this section he will gain experience and eventually graduate to some difficult pieces in the balance of the book. In conclusion, may I say that I feel that these numerous examples of furniture design will be helpful to those interested in making new models, as they have before them a vast collection of special types from which to work. Thus the creation and production of modern furniture advance.”
Includes designs by Isamu Noguchi, Pierre Kleycamp, Florence Knoll, Charles Niedringhaus, Sorensen and Johnson, Hans Wegner, Eugenio Gentili, Marcel Breuer, Ray and Charles Eames, Vermund Larsen, Andre Dupres, Gabrielle Mucchi, Molgaard Nielsen and Peter Hvidt, James Leonard, Verner Panton, Markelbach and Karston, Edward J. Wormley, Eero Saarinen, Harry Bertoia, George Nelson, Paul McCobb, Doane Hage, Lina Bo Bardi, Jens Risom, Burton Tysinger, Victor Canzani, Jack Aureli, Alexander Cranstoun, Harvey Probber, Allen Gould, Hans Bellman, Marco Zanuso, Carlo Pagani, and many others.
Mario Dal Fabbro (Italian, 1913 – 1990) studied both at the R. Superior Institute for Decorative and Industrial Arts at Venice, and the R. Magistero Artistico. He graduated with high honors in 1937.
Before his advanced education, Dal Fabbro worked in his family's furniture design shop. Always able to combine the theoretical with the practical aspects of construction, Dal Fabbro's early experience helps account for his later success in the technical and creative fields of furniture design. Between 1938 and 1948 — before immigrating to America — Dal Fabbro created designs for private individuals and various furniture houses in Milan.
He participated in the Triennale di Milano competition in 1939 and 1947. Besides contributing to the Italian magazines Domus and Stile and the French magazine L'Architecture D'Aujourd'hui, Dal Fabbro wrote several books on furniture which were published by Goelich in Milan. He also won the Ganzanti contest for standardization of furniture.
In 1948 he immigrated to America and a year later published Modern Furniture: Its Design and Construction , which achieved international recognition. Following this success, Dal Fabbro began designing furniture for mass production. He has also contributed to various American newspapers and magazines, including The New York Times and House and Garden. After the initial success — evidently international as well as in America — Dal Fabbro went on to author books in the next three decades, each successive volume coming as the result of the impact of the preceding one.