HI folks; forgive my recent absence – I’ve been busy but haven’t forgotten my mid mod priorities entirely. A while back I wrote about our great find: a dining room hutch made in 1962 by Broyhill; part of their Brasilia line dedicated to that great optimism about all things space age (I might add that while the Danish Modern stuff I love is very restrained and elegant; Broyhill seems very American in it’s baroque exuberance). Well, the future has returned again! I saw this dresser on craigslist over the holidays and went for it.
The only hitch was that I’m in the SF Bay Area and this was a listing from Palm Springs over 500 miles away. Do think that gave me pause? You don’t know me very well then! I had a few days off for the holidays and had always wanted to visit Palm Springs; the sleepy yet infamous resort town where the stylish retired while away the hot days in their Eames rockers. Off I went; road trip to Palm Springs!
The dresser fit into the bedroom much better than the old Mission Highboy; I love the way the low long lines make the room feel so much more……suburban (yes, I’m “taking back” the word suburban in order to make it positive again!) It also came with this nifty mirror….
I love the details on Broyhill’s Brasilia line – check out the hardware from Tomorrowland…
I snapped a few shots from the road trip around town in Palm Springs. This bank even looks like the Oscar Niemeyer architecture in Brasilia that the furniture line is inspired by. Notice the similarity between the lines on the doors in the middle of the dresser and the colonnade below…
And check out the natural stone and the soaring facade covering this row of shops on Palm Canyon Drive….
Lastly, a more subtle, but just as telling detail of Googie architecture, the bold stone and wood leveraged out in a massive cantilevered overhang (same principle at work with the inset legs of the dresser – everything leans out beyond it’s support and appears to float)….
I must say that when I arrived late at night, Palm Springs was lit up like Snow White’s castle; every cool Neutra house and Googie shop had nighttime floodlights. But next morning in the unforgiving desert sunlight, everything seemed a tad more shabby and bleached. I spent the next day hitting the mid mod shops in this oasis dedicated to mid-century, but found it didn’t quite live up to my fantastical dreams (my prize for best mid-mod shopping still goes to Portland’s E. Hawthorne Blvd.) Still – it was a great trip to neverland and the dresser will always serve as a nostalgiac reminder of the future place that once was.
