Mid-Century Modern Furniture

Authors & Works Cited

Authors

The Mid-Century Furniture Online Archive was curated by a team of University of Michigan School of Information Graduate students, including Susie Hartings, Alexis Miettinen, Kathia Muniz-Rios, and Erika Kohl.

• Susie Hartings (she/her) was responsible for researching the design trends that mark modernist design and highlighting how mass consumerism played a role in the materials used to create modernist furniture pieces. She created the About and Materials and Consumerism pages.
• Alexis Miettinen (she/they) was responsible for researching how American elitism following the Cold War drove designers to create the designs we call "modernist." She assisted in creating the Global and Political Influences and  Domestic Life pages.
• Kathia Muniz-Rios (she/they)was responsible for researching the global and political influences that fueled America's desire to display power and freedom and how this influenced design choices that are attributed to modernism.  She researched how the fear of war and the role of mass consumerism were factors of this time period that greatly impacted the public.  She assisted in creating the  Global and Political Influences and  Domestic Life pages.
• Erika Kohl was responsible for researching the role gender normativity played behind designs that encouraged the simplicity and nonconformist characterization of modernist design.  She assisted in creating the Domestic Life and Authors & Works Cited pages. 

Works Cited

Auscherman, Amy, Grawe, Sam, & Ransmeier, Leon (Eds.). (2019). Herman Miller : a way of living. London: Phaidon Press Limited.

Castillo, Greg (2010). Cold War on the Home Front : The Soft Power of Midcentury Design. Minneapolis, University Of Minnesota Press.

Lucinda Kaukas Havenhand. (2019). Mid-Century Modern Interiors : The Ideas That Shaped Interior Design in America. Bloomsbury Visual Arts.

Wilson, K. (2021). Mid-century modernism and the American body: Race, gender, and the politics of power in Design. Princeton University Press. 

Altimus, Elizabeth(2012). Out of many, one: Glimpses of the USA by Charles and Ray Eames, The Family of Man by Edward Steichen, and universal thought in cold war propaganda. Louisiana State University Digital Commons.

Scwab, K. (n.d.). Midcentury modern design got its start as Cold War propaganda. Fast Company. Retrieved November 7, 2022, from https://www.fastcompany.com/90304574/the-secret-history-of-midcentury-modern-design-as-cold-war-propaganda