One of the first times Cynthia Chua saw her future home in person, it was about to take an excavator to its side. Fortunately, the Seattle property was handpicked by two of her daughters, Sarah and Julia Smith, who have a keen eye for design: Sarah is an architect at local firm Best Practice Architecture, and Julia works at Unique Art Glass, a family-owned, custom stained glass studio.

The 1950s two-level residence is set on a quiet street in Seattle’s Mount Baker neighborhood, and it has views of Lake Washington just a few blocks away, so it seemed like the perfect place for Cynthia, a retired doctor, who was moving to Seattle from Cincinnati to be closer to two of her three daughters. (The oldest, Lauren is a creative director and amateur photographer living in Los Angeles with her three young children).

Before: Exterior 

After: Exterior 

Welcome to Field Guide, a column by Sami Reiss of Snake covering all-time design and where you can find it.

At a recent edition of Salone del Mobile in Milan, Cassina, the Italian furniture company, debuted a light by Ray and Charles Eames that had never been put into production before. Working behind the scenes of the release of the Galaxy, a 1949 design that Eames Office had been working on introducing since the 1980s, was Form Portfolios, a licensing company that opened shop expressly to make designer midcentury furnishings more accessible to the era’s aficionados.

For that crowd, Form’s efforts, along with those of legacy producers, are today creating a refreshed retail environment for historic design objects: some originally made only in small numbers, others that may have been produced at grand scale but went out of production, and, in the case of the Galaxy, those that were never created to begin with. These objects now give the vehement design lover other options besides shelling out five figures for a vintage piece, or competing against other buyers at auction in hopes of a deal on one.

For Form’s founder and CEO, Mark Masiello, seeing through the release of the Galaxy and more objects like it comes out of a “pure love for design and a desire to bring innovation to the industry,” he says. An avid furniture collector who was working in private equity, Masiello began Form, based in Rhode Island and Copenhagen, in 2017 after taking a tour of Hans Wegner’s studio. A long-time collector of Wegner’s, Masiello was moved by a folder containing designs for the Wishbone chair, and dismayed by the spare fashion in which the studio was operating. “It was just one family member,” Masiello says, “part-time, three days a week.” It was clear the archive was languishing: despite Wegner’s name and body of work, the family didn’t know what to do.

“If an artist makes music,” Masiello explains, “a music publisher manages these rights—but that doesn’t exist in the design world.” Or it didn’t before: Form, Masiello says, has put 600-plus pieces into production by connecting families with producers. (In furniture, generally, a designer owns a design and licenses it to a furniture company, which then produces it. Myriad factors, though—including the death of a designer—determine whether it remains in production.) Most notably, the firm helped return Paul McCobb’s work to the market after a several-decades-long absence. While he was among the most popular designers of the 1950s and ’60s—his disarmingly simple tapered-leg chairs and desks were often modular, and built out the midcentury home and office aesthetic—times changed, and his pieces fell out of production. And over the past several years, the McCobb heirs, through Form, have returned the designer’s work back into wide availability under several different makers. CB2, notably, has reintroduced several designs by McCobb, many of them from his Irwin collection and others a selection of Bowtie seating.

The process for bringing some of these objects to market can be lengthy. To update Eames’s Helena light, originally created for a church in Arkansas, Eames Demetrios, Ray and Charles’s grandson and the Eames Office’s director, says he spent 200 hours interviewing people, including churchgoers, who were close to the object in some way. Recreating other items is more straightforward: Hem, a Finnish design brand, is responsible for a faithful remake of Yrjö Kukkapuro’s Experiment chair. (Having debuted at Salone del Mobile in 1982, the chair itself isn’t midcentury, but Kukkapuro is of that era.) On its own, Eames Office handles the creation of some of Ray and Charles’s designs, like an elephant toy that was never put into production until recently. As with that instance, sometimes items are rolled out with an eye toward younger consumers, or those who are new to design. “The elephants were part of that,” says Demetrios, an “entryway into design.”

Location: 2432 Christopherson Road, Surrey, British Columbia, Canada

Price: $1,700,000 CAD (approximately $1,189,347 USD)

Year Built: 1979

Architect: John Perkins

Footprint: 1,907 square feet (3 bedrooms, 2 baths)

Lot Size: 0.19 Acres

From the Agent: “Presenting The Cedar House—a rare surviving modernist retreat set between ocean and forest, designed by John Perkins after shaping Whistler Village. Its Sea Ranch–inspired form—steeply sloped roofs, exposed timber, and seamless integration with nature—creates a home that is both striking and serene, where architecture disappears into the landscape, offering an escape deeply rooted in its surroundings.”

Welcome to How They Pulled It Off, where we take a close look at one particularly challenging aspect of a home design and get the nitty-gritty details about how it became a reality.

Hiding in plain sight in Greenpoint, Brooklyn—a neighborhood known for its railroad-style apartments and recently developed high-rise buildings—is a ground-level maisonette with a winding floating staircase. In terms of New York City apartments, this two-bedroom is a unicorn with a lofty, 14-foot-high ceiling and a private terrace with its own entrance. It’s the only unit of its kind in a six-floor residential building. 

INC Architecture & Design, the firm that designed 1 Hotel Brooklyn Bridge and the TWA Hotel at JFK Airport (among other architectural landmarks), handled every creative aspect of this property. “It was exciting for us as we don’t often get approached for a project like this,” says Drew Stuart, INC cofounder and Construction & Development Director. “We took on the entire scope as executive architect, design architect, and interior designer for all the units.”

For the ground floor unit, which is considered a retail-level space, INC saw an opportunity to create an elegant staircase that works with the large, windowed patio doors. (A legitimate retail space requires at least 14-foot-high ceilings; this ceiling line strikes all the way through to the back where the apartment is located. A bank occupies the front-facing retail space.)

Most design fans are familiar with Herman Miller’s extensive catalogue of furnishings by world-renowned designers. Originally founded in 1905 as Star Furniture Co. and rebranded as the Herman Miller Furniture Company in 1923, the company launched its first modern furniture line in 1933—with a set of bedroom furniture and seven “radically modern” clocks designed by Gilbert Rohde for the 1933 Chicago World’s Fair.

Phaidon’s new book, Herman Miller: A Way of Living, is a must for design lovers, midcentury aficionados, and of course, Herman Miller fans. The book covers the history of the brand through 10 of their most significant collections and pieces, but also includes some of their lesser-known items that are equally thoughtful.

Each chapter highlights how the ever-evolving culture of America, particularly in the midcentury era, affected the company, and how Herman Miller impacted culture in the United States through their furniture, textiles, housewares, design solutions and ideas, and associated artists, architects, innovators, and designers.