MidCentury Modern Styles

******* Space Age Design for the Bold Future World

About

By on May 27, 2018

Mid-Century Modern MCM is the pinnacle of Space Age futuristic design in interior, graphic design, art, architecture, film-scape, products, fashion and style that emerged in the post WWII era to the mid 70’s and inspired the world to soar with a new era of humanity’s expansion towards the heavens.

With the sleek lines of jets and space craft transforming the world of human lifestyle evolution and cultural optimism.

We curate Mid-Century Modern Styles as a labour of love, as our family has worked with passion in the Arts.

We started as refugees from war-torn Europe’s tragedies, and came to America for a better life.

Holding fast to the faith in a better future world in what lives in the hearts of all the huddled masses who yearn to breathe free.

We are proud to be contributors to the futuristic artistic movement.

Vladimir Kagan’s mid-century modern designs are collected the world over by a Who’s Who of design and culture, and in the permanent collections of many museums.

Among the prolific catalog of stunning work he did, Vlady designed the unique chairs (seen here with the chrome base) for Star Trek’s set design, and for dynamic landmark projects like the House of the Future at Disneyland.

 

Vlady escaped Germany as a child in WWII and came to the US to be rescued from the War and live with his family in New Jersey.

https://www.wallpaper.com/lifestyle/a-design-journey-a-new-book-exploring-vladmir-kagens-half-a-century-career

Vlady’s family Anna Karen Morrow, and her husband Jeff Morrow, the star of screen and stage and radio, were married in a simple ceremony on the East Coast and went West to work super hard and struggled to become a fabulous Hollywood couple.

Jeff and Anna were propelled by the MCM movement, with Anna acting in the original Star Trek TV series episode “All Our Yesterdays” 1969 with William Shatner “Captain Kirk” who grew up in Montreal and both William and Donavan Shapray went to the same high school and both graduated McGill University where Donavan played for the McGill football team. Both William and Donavan grew up in adjacent Montreal neighborhoods.

Donavan’s aunt Anna was cast in the classic Hitchcock 1956 Warner Bros film “The Wrong Man” starring the immortal Oscar winning (for “On Golden Pond”) star Henry Fonda. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_Karen_Morrow

Episode “All Our Yesterdays” 1969 with Anna Karen Morrow (above)

Jeff is well known and celebrated for an enormous range of cinema genres including fan fave’s Universal Studios creature feature “The Creature Walks Among Us” 1956 starring The Creature From The Black Lagoon and Jeff as the star scientist; and his outer-space epic classic 1955 Sci-Fi movie “This Island Earth” which was the first feature film to be set on another planet called Metaluna where Jeff played the lead role of Exeter the Alien scientist that seeks the peaceful cooperation of Earth’s scientists.

Vlady and Anna and Jeff’s family Bar Shapray’s bold expressionistic drawings and paintings that use few lines to create an uplifting wonderful energy has been collected by luminaries such as Otis Redding’s manager Phil Walden founder Capricorn Records.

Her new work is of dancers that embody the soaring push to the heavens that the MCM Mid-Century Modern movement elevates in the human spirit.

https://www.mercurygalerie.com

Bar and Donavan and Adrien lived in Donavan’s futuristic designed space-age inspired ultramodern octagonal house with floor to ceiling wide span windows and open cathedral ceilings that he built with his advanced construction technology Panorama Homes company.

Building houses was very challenging work, and requires overcoming all kinds of difficulties!

Panorama Homes created innovative design elevated homes on the slopes of the Hollywood Hills.

 

Adrien grew up being strictly mentored by family Vlady and his steeped-in-tradition British wife, TV Needlework guru Erica Wilson

“Erica” Needlework Series Public Television 

The wooden frame and needlework rocking chair on the TV set above is a loving collab between Vlady and Erica!

Vlady and Erica and Mallory above in London at our family celebration, sharing the Star Trek love, taken with one of the very first digital cameras at the time!

 

Vlady’s brother-in-law and Adrien’s mentor, Dr. David Josefowitz CBE, born at the beginning of WWI in 1918 in Kharkov, Ukraine, with his brother, Samuel Mulik Josefowitz (1921–2015), co-founded Concert Hall Society, Inc., a subscription-mail-order classical record label. David was an accomplished violinist and occasionally performed and composed under the pseudonym Jose Davido.

Education

After completing a year studying at Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule in Zurich, David Josefowitz was admitted as a sophomore around 1938 to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he studied chemistry and played soccer. He also pledged to the Sigma Alpha Mu fraternity at MIT in 1938. David Josefowitz was an expert in plastics and, in 1945, earned a PhD in Chemistry from the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn, which now is part of the New York University Tandon School of Engineering. David had also studied music (violin) at the Klindworth-Scharwenka Conservatory in Berlin.

David married Vladimir’s sister Tanya R. Kagan on May 2, 1949, in Manhattan.

The Mid-Century Modern style inspired design of the David Josefowitz Concert Recital Hall on Marylebone in London at the RAM Royal Academy of Music was donated and built in David’s golden years, and is his gift to the future generations of musicians and music lovers that celebrate the human spirit.

LONDON, UK  

David at our family celebration at the Royal College of Music, London, UK

David playing with London music friends and family at home in Palm Beach.

 

We are excited to share our insight, expertise and enthusiasm for this seminal design Mid-Century Modern movement as a technical aesthetic advancement in humanity’s history.

Thank you for joining us on this journey of a lifestyle that takes us to the stars!


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