Whether it's a lipstick-red love seat shaped like Marilyn Monroe's lips, an anthropomorphic "man" chaise, a bean bag chair, or a "domestic capsule unit," 1960s furniture still has the power to startle and delight. In Op to Pop, Cara Greenberg takes on this little-explored but exciting and fertile era of furniture design, providing original, readable scholarship that places '60s furnishings in a cultural context and helps sort the good from the fad. She explores in detail the roots of and influences on '60s design, from space travel to Pop Art, in a joyful visual tour of the decade's bold and fresh-looking furniture output. Op to Pop features 250 photographs plus a source guide to the growing number of outlets for 1960s furniture design.
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
About the Author
Cara Greenberg has been a professional freelance writer since 1978, producing hundreds of articles on design, antiques, and collecting for Metropolitan Home and Art & Antiques (where she is a contributing editor), as well as The New York Times, House Beautiful, Elle, Decor, Money, and other publications. She is also the author of several acclaimed books on furniture and style, including Mid-Century Modern: Furniture of the 1950s (Harmony, 1984, 1989, 1995) and House Beautiful Bedrooms (Hearst, 1996).
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More About the Author
I'm a veteran design and travel journalist for many national magazines and newspapers, and the author of several books on interior and furniture design. I blog for fun at http://casacara.wordpress.com (casaCARA: Old Houses for Fun and Profit), where you can find links to some of my work. Every Thursday, my interior design column, "The Insider," appears on the Brooklyn-based real estate website, Brownstoner.com.
Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
18 of 18 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
As a person who collects and decorates with 60's pop art furniture, I use the Op to Pop book as the ultimate resource guide when looking for new pieces for my collection. Every time I logon to the internet I carry this book with me because it has every designer, manufacturer, date, and a full color photograph of every piece of pop art furniture that came out in the 60's. The best part of this book, however, is the resource guide in the back of the book which lists: every state's vintage furniture shops, current manufacturers of pop furniture, auctions carrying 60's vintage furniture, and a list of pop art-centered web sites. I highly recommend this book! I have ordered so many vintage design books, both current in print and books printed in the 60's, but none have ever compared to Op To Pop by Cara Greenberg. After reading this book, I am now inspired to buy the 50's version, written by the same author.
13 of 13 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
Whether you're a collector of 1960s furniture like myself or simply someone with an interest in the period immediately following the "midcentury modern" era, you'll find yourself instantly drawn in by this wonderful book. Even if you don't read a single line of text, the book is worth buying for the great images alone, many of which I have not seen before. Unlike a lot of design books that recycle the same stock photos again and again, "Op to Pop" throws in plenty of images from obscure sources, and the photos work well as visual complements to the information given in the text. The text of this book is not just a boring, strictly factual account of '60s furnishings, however. The author has gone straight to the sources, from designers themselves to pioneering distributors of wild furniture, to get tidbits of information that could never be found in some of the drier modern furniture books on the market. Nevertheless, the text is logically arranged, with separate sections on specific countries and certain designers. I highly recommend this book to anyone with even a passing interest in modern design; whether you are delighted or disgusted by the wild and colorful designs of the 1960s, you will no doubt be amazed to see just how radically most of the major designers of the era departed from the midcentury aesthetics of the 1950s.
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
Given the incredible task of organizing one of the most complex design periods in the 20th century, Cara Greenberg brilliantly succeeds in Op To Pop Furniture of the 1960s. Complete with fabulous, seldom-seen, full-page color photographs of model rooms, showrooms, and objects which were courtesy of the designers, manufacturers, museums, and the original distributors themselves, this book offers an absolute visual treat for novice and advanced collector alike! In addition to well-documented pieces by Colombo and Panton, Ms. Greenberg also provides us with photos and identifications of obscure pieces from the period as well. In addition to all of the European designers and manufacturers who led the way with innovation in the 1960s, Ms. Greenberg also undertakes the task of historically documenting the work of several important American designers in the 1960s including Probber, Mascheroni, Orenstein, Small, and Kagan. Organized in thoughtful chapters and subchapters, Op to Pop is able to address the plethora of materials which characterized the designs, as well as the social and cultural context which gives design ascedancy to many of the objects produced in the 1960s. By going directly to the sources (the industrial designers, interior decorators, distributors with their respective showrooms, and the manufacturers), Ms. Greenberg has created a first-hand narrative replete with anecdotes that thoroughly enriches our experience of the objects' aesthetics themselves.
As with Ms. Greenberg's previous book, Midcentury Modern, Op to Pop is destined to become a "must-have" reference tool and constant source of pleasure for anyone interested in 20th century design.
Truly... an outstanding piece of work!
Most Recent Customer Reviews
Op to Pop -1960's
Very impressed with the level of information provided. This book could be used as insight to one of the pure forms of art culture in the Op-Pop era. Read more
Published on July 13, 2006 by K. Hollister
Not what I was expecting and returned the book
It's a beautiful book, but I was looking for examples of wood furniture that I could give to a craftsman and ask to custom-replicate, so as to match the period of my house. Read more
Published on July 12, 2006 by Rainedear
I was looking for furniture real people would use
I just don't get anyone actually liking this book. I paid $12 and it is not even worth the shelf space. I love the author's other book. The stuff doesn't even look usable to me. Read more
Published on March 7, 2005 by S. Hoover
left me wanting more..more photos...more rooms
great representation of mod 60s and 70s furniture...would like to see more knoll and knoll type knock offs, more op art..... Read more
Published on July 5, 1999
'Wallpaper' Magazine Lovers Note- This One's for You!
It's been a while since I had the pleasure of opening Cara Greenberg's 'Mid-Century Modern' for the first time. Read more
Published on May 31, 1999 by Sandy McLendon
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