New York’s Best Furniture Show Right Now Is in a Clothing Store

It was on a bit of a whim that I went to the most surprising design show I’ve been to in some time—and about midcentury furniture, of which there is seemingly no limit of coverage, to boot. Organized by Rarify, the vintage furniture platform that focuses exclusively on authentic pieces and education—though even that description seems simplistic—it came about through the founders’ passion for design that goes far, far back.

While most people best know the midcentury canon through designers like Herman Miller and Knoll, David Rosenwasser, the curator of the exhibit and Rarify’s cofounder, told me in a tour this week that it was through his collecting of the massive array of items under Rarify’s belt that he came to realize that there was another big player on the scene that shaped the interior design of the period, but was far less known. That’s what Skidmore, Owings & Merrill: Hidden Furniture Masterpieces explores—how the Chicago-based architecture firm, best known for skyscrapers like the Willis Tower and Burj Khalifa, actually ended up shaping American design by mass producing furniture for those buildings’ office interiors.

This is a collection, spanning the years of 1950 to 1991, that could only be brought together by an obsessive, which Rosenwasser is happy to admit he is. Located in NoHo at the New York location of the high-end Italian clothing store LuisaViaRoma, the exhibition, which is open through April 30, is a gathering of roughly 60 pieces from Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, or SOM, alongside numerous photos and archival pieces—magazines, books, plans—that align and flesh out the intents and passions of its makers. It’s one that, in a release, Rarify identifies as "the most extensive assemblage of SOM furniture in the world."

If the pieces look commonplace, that’s the point: it is striking to see them situated amongst beautiful archival photos of furniture in buildings as mundane sounding as Nashville’s National Life Center. (SOM commissioned architectural photographer Ezra Stoller for the images.) It harkens back to a time when seemingly mundane elements of design mattered in mass production, so much so that furniture for places as boring as offices were made with glass thicknesses or burl-fronts not usually seen now except in high-end furniture. But there wasn’t embellishment—or even labeling—to the point that a chair would be recognizable as a SOM design. As Rosenwasser explained it, SOM commissioned designers—like Nicos Zographos or Charles Pfister—largely for love of the game.

How did they gather this collection, then, if little of it is labeled and very little was archived? Rosenwasser says it took diligent work on Facebook Marketplace and with collector contacts, as well as using the archival photos and documents from SOM to authenticate the pieces. The work itself is in many ways so similar to everything else that existed on the market at that time, and has since been copied so extensively, that its success can almost make it difficult to identify and trace.

I left invigorated, but almost wishing everyone who checks it out could get a personal tour by Rosenwasser (if I can make a suggestion, maybe the team should look into audio guides). If the pieces feel a little incongruous amongst the surrounding modern designer clothing, so be it: it’s a joy to see this work revealed at all. And, the Rarify team is putting some of it up for sale, should you be so inspired that you have to have it for yourself.

Top Photo by Lucas Blair Simpson © SOM.

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