NEW YORK – Playful and dramatic yet functional and, above all, comfortable, Milo Baughman furniture is the epitome of good design. The designer’s work is renowned among aficionados of the midcentury modern look. In the mid-1940s, he was an integral part of the California modernist movement and designed furniture for big companies like Directional, Drexel and others.
When he tried to bring his designs to the East Coast, however, he hit a wall of conservatism not ready for his forward-thinking designs. At the time, about 90 percent of the furniture there was of the early American style. Traveling from Long Beach, California, in 1952 in his Studebaker sedan, he came to High Point, North Carolina, the furniture capital of the world. Over the course of three weeks, he presented his sketches and portfolio to one large furniture company executive after another – about 30 in all. One by one, they all turned him down, content with the traditional furniture looks they were already successful with.
During one of his last presentations, as he was packing away his designs into his satchel, one young man who approached Baughman after the bosses had left the room. He told him how much he admired his drawings and expressed regret his company turned him down. He suggested Baughman meet with a friend of his, who was starting up his own eponymous furniture company, Thayer Coggin. In a life, there are certain moments that are pivotal and this was one. Baughman found a like-minded soul in Thayer and the two sealed a deal to work together, not with contracts and lawyers, but with a handshake. Their partnership lasted 50 years and spawned many successful bench-made furniture pieces that defined the modern furniture movement. Their first designs together, the Scoop chairs and the Fred lounger, debuted in 1953 and within a decade, Baughman’s newest lines were a highlight of the High Point Market, the largest home furnishings trade show. “At Thayer Coggin, Milo had free reign to develop his sensuous, streamlined designs that are now deemed modern design classics. Their signature style employed chrome, brass, glass, burled wood, contemporary textiles and glossy lacquers to dramatic effect,” according to the company’s website. Visual interest was achieved through cantilevered metal frames and combining textures and patterns.
Among many awards, Baughman was inducted into the Furniture Hall of Fame in 1987 and his work was featured in the “High Styles: Twentieth Century American Design” exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City.
Several of Baughman’s designs have been in continuous production at Thayer Coggin, as well as classics that have been reissued. Among them is the Chunky Milo chair, originally designed in 1927, featuring luxurious padded seating in a dramatic and geometric metal frame. Sectional seating options like the Circle sofa, which debuted in 1968, evince timeless and modern seating.
Baughman’s vintage pieces are favorites among collectors and when they appear on the auction market, they are quickly snapped up at robust prices. Rago Arts and Auction Center and Wright have long featured Baughman’s designs, including this sofa that brought $8,000 at Rago’s May 2019 auction and a semi-circular sofa that made $7,500 in September 2018 there.
Of the latter piece, Richard Wright, CEO Rago/Wright, noted the sofa was sold with two console tables as companion pieces. “The large semi-circular sofa demonstrates Baughman’s use of geometry as part of his design vocabulary. The piece is a pure arc set upon a recessed base, lending a floating character to the form,” he said. The tables echo the same curve as the sofa with the top floating on a rectilinear base crafted from thin square-stock metal. “Baughman used that base form in another famous line of seating and cabinetry, all right-angles and rectangles,” Wright added.
“The other sofa does rather the opposite, expressing a playful biomorphic quality. The chrome base is a significant design element, not meant to recede in any way. This same model was offered on a brass base, achieving the same effect but in a warmer metal,” he said. “While generally I think of Baughman’s work as more rectilinear, he did create other curved seating forms. The particular design owes a debt to Vladimir Kagan, but Baughman interprets it well.”
Baughman’s visual vocabulary continues to influence design today. Wade Terwilliger, president of Palm Beach Modern Auctions in West Palm Beach, Florida, said Baughman’s career spanned the mid-20th century — the height of modern — and remains relevant even now. “What strikes me about this designer is how vast his range was. I usually think of his chrome and upholstered Thayer Coggin furniture, with its shiny-yet-comfortable ’70s design aesthetic that never really went away. Then I recall that he also did work for Glenn of California, Directional and Drexel since the ’40s,” he said. “He spoke to his customers and made changes, designing for them and their lifestyles. To me, that is real talent. The manufacturers he worked for were all huge, so his designs must have rung true to them also.”
Baughman furniture has proven itself to be enduring, timeless and classic and today is a backbone of the vintage market. The designer who forsook trends, believing that once something became trendy, it was already going too far, once said, “The structure of the living environment … must create well-being for its human inhabitants … it must offer significant social and emotional benefits … it cannot simply look good.”