Vladimir Kagan: Fine Furniture Design

Vladimir Kagan

Vladimir Kagan

Vladimir Kagan

Vladimir Kagan

Vladimir Kagan

Vladimir Kagan

Vladimir Kagan

No designer of the day steadily offered works with more verve and dynamism than Vladimir Kagan. While others, it seems, designed with suburban households in mind, Kagan aimed to suit the tastes of young, sophisticated city-dwellers. With signature designs that feature sleekly curved frames and others that have dramatic out-thrust legs, Kagan made furniture sexy.

     

Kagan’s father was a Russian master cabinetmaker who took his family first to Germany (where Vladimir was born) and then to New York in 1938. After studying architecture at Columbia University, Kagan opened a design firm at age 22 and immediately made a splash with his long, low and sinuous Serpentine sofa. Furniture lines such as the "Tri-symmetric" group of glass-topped, three-legged tables and the vivacious "Contours" chairs soon followed.

     

Kagan’s choices of form and materials evolved through subsequent decades, embracing lucite, aluminum, and burl-wood veneers. By the late 1960s, Kagan was designing austere, asymmetrical cabinets and his "Omnibus" group of modular sofas and chairs. For all his aesthetic élan, Kagan said that throughout his career, his touchstone was comfort. “A lot of modern furniture was not comfortable. And so comfort is -- form follows function. The function was to make it comfortable,” he once commented. “I created what I called 'vessels for the human body.'"

     

A diverse group of bodies have made themselves at home with Kagan designs. Among the famous names who commissioned and collected his designs are Marilyn Monroe, Gary Cooper, Andy Warhol, David Lynch, Angelina Jolie, and Brad Pitt, and firms such as Gucci and Giorgio Armani. His work is in numerous museum collections, including those of the Victoria and Albert and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

     

Because of its idiosyncrasy, Kagan’s work did not lend itself to mass-production. Kagan never signed on with any of the major furniture-making corporations, and examples of his designs are relatively rare. Even decades after their conception, Kagan pieces still command the eye, with their freshness, energy, sensuality, and wit.