Vintage Pearsall Furniture

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Adrian Pearsall (1925-2011) liked to make his furniture out of walnut so much it became his signature, but he wasn't keen about putting his actual name on his creations. Thus, much of the vintage Pearsall furniture on the market today bear tags...
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Adrian Pearsall (1925-2011) liked to make his furniture out of walnut so much it became his signature, but he wasn't keen about putting his actual name on his creations. Thus, much of the vintage Pearsall furniture on the market today bear tags that read "Craft Associates, Wilkes-Barre Pennsylvania" (that early enterprise, founded in 1952, was sold to Lane in 1968) or Comfort Design, Pearsall's final firm, established in 1970. Pearsall's aesthetic was solidly Mid-Century Modern but not as severe as that of the designers working for Herman Miller or Knoll. Indeed, Craft Associates was founded to bring MCM to the masses. Sure, design historians routinely evoke his name in the same breath as George Nelson, Ray and Charles Eames, and George Nakashima, but Pearsall's chairs, sofas, and coffee tables were always more playful than those of such contemporaries, exceptions like Nelson's Marshmallow Sofa notwithstanding. Pearsall's work passed what you might call the Jetsons lunch-box test: Would one of Pearsall's orange "Gondola" sofas, "Jax" glass-and-walnut coffee tables, or avocado-green high-backed lounge chairs look at home on the side of Jetsons lunch box? They would. Craft Associates produced plenty of tasteful easy chairs (some with wooden arm rests) and matching ottomans, as well as numerous styles of long, low, curving sofas (some with built-in end tables) for the Mad Men of their day, but Pearsall also catered to the traditional forms of everyday homes. In particular, his rocking chair, with its wool-covered cushions suspended between a pair of curved-and-polished walnut arms/legs is a friendly, yet modern, update of the original. Pearsall also popularized an Italian invention, the bean-bag chair, whose ads bragged about their polymer-pellet filling and soft velvet or velour coverings. A more formal and rigid variation on this squishy theme was Pearsall's scoop chair, which basically contained the upholstered and fitted equivalent of a bean bag on top...
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