The "cool" Modernists are characterized by streamlined utilitarianism and minimal ornamentation. Challenging—indeed, overthrowing—traditions, these designers produced the iconic mid-century pieces that probably first come to mind when one thinks of the term "Modernism": the spare, clean-lined furniture, linear or curved, influenced by the restraints of Bauhaus and the precepts of the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. They were quick to employ newly available techniques like molding and new materials like plastics, resins and acrylics. They saw the possibilities in unlikely non-traditional materials such as plywood and industrial metals and eventually changed the way we think of furniture.

The Cranbrook crowd included Charles and Ray Eames (a case of a teacher marrying his student), Florence Schust Knoll, Harry Bertoia and Eero Saarinen (son of the school’s architect, who also was a faculty member). Several went on to design for Hans Knoll’s adventurous, eponymous furniture company, which dominated the manufacture of cutting-edge Modernist furniture in the 1950s, forcefully led by Knoll’s architect/designer wife, Florence. Knoll worked with some of the most distinguished designers of the era. The company produced Bertoia’s Diamond chair (steel welded into open latticework), Saarinen’s Tulip chair (molded plastic seat on a pedestal) and Womb chair (enveloping upholstery on a steel frame), pieces by Nakashima and Florence Knoll’s own distinguished line. (Part of Knoll’s dominance was the breadth of its offerings. In 1948 the firm acquired production rights to two significant and venerated Bauhaus designs that originated in the 1920s: Marcel Breuer’s Wassily chair and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe’s Barcelona chair.)
 
Currently, Saarinen is the focus of attention because of an important traveling exhibition, "Eero Saarinen: Shaping the Future," his first retrospective. (Upon its termination in New Haven in 2010, the centennial of his birth, the exhibition will have been seen in Helsinki, Brussels, Detroit, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, New York, Oslo, St. Louis and Washington, D.C.) "Saarinen’s secondary market is cursed by the fact that his life was too short and his designs are too good," says Zemaitis. "Every piece of his furniture has been mass-produced and extremely successful. Only a handful of prototypes, usually produced in collaboration with Eames, have ever appeared on the market."

The Herman Miller furniture company produced Charles and Ray Eames’s equally untraditional work, most notably their molded plywood furniture; George Nelson pieces, including his amusing Marshmallow sofas; and a few pieces by Isamu Noguchi, who also designed for Knoll. Although Noguchi, a disciple of Constantin Brancusi, was a heralded sculptor, he designed a small but distinguished body of furniture, which—no surprise—had a biomorphic, sculptural character to it. "Noguchi was able to make divine sculpture out of upholstered furniture, which is quite remarkable," says Nancy McClelland of McClelland + Rachen Art Advisors in New York, which specializes in 20th-century decorative arts. "His great contribution to furniture is his wonderful scuptural Cloud sofa and ottoman, of which only a handful were made." Important Noguchi pieces can sell in the mid-six figures. A coffee table sold in 2005 at the Wright auction house in Chicago for $630,000. A protean talent, Noguchi also designed stage sets, gardens, fountains, murals, electric lighting and radios for Zenith.
 
At both Knoll and Herman Miller, some Modernist pieces were produced in limited numbers. Others were more generally available and a few, in continuous production, can be purchased new today. A designer’s collaboration with a furniture manufacturer is a careful balancing act offsetting artistic integrity with the necessary demands of the manufacturing process.

It’s easy to forget how revolutionary some of this mid-century furniture was. It was more than iconoclastic; it challenged old perceptions and redefined an aesthetic. The fact that today it is part of the American idiom, that it can be found in your dentist’s office, is a testament to the transformative power of the idea that furniture is an art form, not a utility.

Roberta Maneker, who has been an Art&Antiques New York correspondent for 11 years, has held executive positions at Christie’s and Phillips de Pury & Company.