HERMAN MILLER CSS
[COMPREHENSIVE STORAGE SYSTEM]
George Nelson & the Herman Miller Furniture Company
Herman Miller Furniture Company: HERMAN MILLER CSS [COMPREHENSIVE STORAGE SYSTEM]. Zeeland, Michigan: The Herman Miller Furniture Company, 1961. Original edition. Slim quarto. Saddle-stitched self wrappers. 12 pp. Text and illustrations. Out-of-print and very uncommon. Trace of wear overall: a nearly fine copy.
8.5 x 11 brochure printed in three colors showcasing the Comprehensive Storage System for the Office and Home (CSS) by George Nelson. Includes all specifications, diemnsions and materials for the CSS components. I suspect this information might be useful to some folks out there. Graphic design by George Tscherny, the graphic ace of George Nelson and Associates.
The Herman Miller furniture lines from 1948 has been called the most influential groups of furniture ever manufactured. A rare piece of original ephemera that captures the zeitgeist of Herman Miller Furniture Company at the height of its influence.
In a characteristically wry 1944 correspondence with Herman Miller founder, DJ De Pree, George Nelson wrote that “your reservations on my suitability as a designer for Herman Miller Co., impressed me very much for they seem to be well founded… the question of lack of experience in the commercial furniture field is also important, but here, I am afraid, you and your associates will have to make the decision on your own.” Fast forward four years later, and Nelson once again found himself reflecting on the integrity of the Herman Miller Co., but this time, not as a potential hire but rather as Herman Miller’s founding creative director. In the 1948 introduction to the catalogue for his first ever collection for the company, he writes, “From the viewpoint of the designer, which is the only viewpoint I can assume with any degree of propriety, the Herman Miller Furniture Company is a rather remarkable institution.”
Whatever leap of faith was required of De Pree to hire Nelson, the affinity and mutual respect shared between the two was undeniably fruitful. Nelson credits Herman Miller’s singularity as a result of a “philosophy” or “attitude” compounded of a set of principles—that what you make is important; that design is integral to business; that products must be honest; that only we can decide what we make, and that there is a market for good design—that allow for a degree of autonomy and innovation unavailable to companies driven by the shallow demands of the market or sales. “There is no attempt to conform to the so-called norms of ‘public taste,’ nor any special faith in the methods used to evaluate the ‘buying public.’ The reason many people are struck by the freshness of Herman Miller designs is that the company is not playing follow-the-leader.”
George Nelson (1908 – 1986) possessed one of the most inventive minds of the 20th century. Nelson was one of those rare people who could envision what isn’t there yet. Nelson described his creative abilities as a series of “zaps” – flashes of inspiration and clarity that he turned into innovative design ideas.
One such “zap” came in 1942 when Nelson conceived the first-ever pedestrian shopping mall – now a ubiquitous feature of our architectural landscape – detailed in his “Grass on Main Street” article. Soon after, he pioneered the concept of built-in storage with the storage wall, a system of storage units that rested on slatted platform benches. The first modular storage system ever, it was showcased in Life magazine and caused an immediate sensation in the furniture industry.
In 1946, Nelson became director of design at Herman Miller, a position he held until 1972. While there, Nelson recruited other seminal modern designers, including Charles Eames and Isamu Noguchi. He also developed his own designs, including the Marshmallow Sofa, the Nelson Platform Bench and the first L-shaped desk, a precursor to the present-day workstation. He also created a series of boldly graphic wall clocks and a series of bubble lamps made of self-webbing plastic.
Nelson felt that designers must be “aware of the consequences of their actions on people and society and thus cultivate a broad base of knowledge and understanding.” He was an early environmentalist, one of the first designers to take an interest in new communications technology and a powerful writer and teacher. Perhaps influenced by his friend, Buckminster Fuller, Nelson’s ultimate goal as a designer was “to do much more with much less.”
In 1953 George Tscherny was hired by George Nelson, the visionary furniture and industrial designer and critic, as an assistant to Irving Harper who was responsible for designing trade advertising for the vanguard furniture manufacturer, the Herman Miller Co. As low man, Tscherny was given the sixth-of-a-page magazine ads to design. “I decided to make plums out of them, ” he says with pride, and he did an admirable job which earned him the full-page ad assignment. He eventually became head of the graphics department with a staff of his own.
“Working with Nelson was probably the most important thing that happened to me professionally,” says Tscherny. “First of all, in those days the Nelson Office was the office and Herman Miller Co., his main client, shared the crown of the furniture company along with Knoll. I was literally thrown in with the elite of design. But more important, Nelson was one of the few articulate spokesmen for design then—and his ideas rubbed off on me. In fact, the most enduring lesson was not to bring preconceived ideas to any project. When Nelson designed a chair, for example, he didn't start with the assumption that it had four legs.” But the key advantage for Tschery was the Nelson had no proprietary interests in graphics. “He was interested in building three-dimensional monuments,” continues Tscherny. “And he thought that graphic design was ephemeral.
“Although he liked me and appreciated what I was doing, he had no pressing need to involve himself in my area. That meant I could do almost anything within reason; I could experiment without looking over my shoulder.”