A Streamline Survivor: Reupholstering a Rare Heywood-Wakefield Chair
May 4, 2026
American modern design through the objects, colors, materials, and makers that shaped everyday style…
Maximalist provides a historical archive of American design from the 1930s through the 1960s, built from collecting, object study, graphic restoration, and close attention to the colors, forms, makers, and visual culture that shaped modern domestic style. Its creative studio, QwkDog Design, extends that world into original art, illustration, textile design, pattern, and digital work.
American Modern Design
EXPLORE THE MAIN COLLECTIONS
California Colorware
1930s California colorware brought modern optimism to the table with bright glazes, streamlined forms, and casual pieces made for everyday living. From Bauer and Pacific and others, these wares turned useful forms into cheerful expressions of color, craft, and West Coast style.
Furniture
From Heywood-Wakefield and rattan to Monterey and other American modern forms, this section explores the furniture that shaped the mid-century home—streamlined, casual, practical, and deeply tied to the changing look of everyday living.
Go-Alongs
Lighting, glassware, textiles, barware, and decorative objects that complete the room. This section explores the supporting pieces that added color, texture, shine, and personality to the American modern home.
The latest on Collecting & Design
Coffee Table Exotica: Midcentury Ceramic Giftware and the Sometimes Inappropriate Fantasy of Elsewhere
One of the most visually striking parts of 1950s ceramic giftware is its fascination with “exotica.” Tropical dancers, hula girls,...
Harry Bertoia for Knoll, 1962
The 1962 Knoll catalog for Harry Bertoia’s chairs captures a well-established modern design classic at the point where it had...
Knoll in 1949: Modern Design As a System
The 1949 Knoll catalog captures the company at an important early point, when Knoll was helping move modern design from...
Eero Saarinen’s Pedestal Collection: Knoll 1970
This 1970 Knoll International catalog, La Collezione di Saarinen, presents Eero Saarinen’s Pedestal Collection as both furniture and design argument....
Knoll’s 1954 Index of Contemporary Design
By 1954, Knoll was no longer simply selling modern furniture. It was selling a fully formed idea of contemporary living...
Duro Chrome’s Commercial Chrome Furniture of 1938
By 1938, Duro Chrome Corporation of St. Louis was part of a crowded and competitive market for chrome-accented commercial furniture....
Gilkie Camp Trailers of 1934: Your Vacation Home on Wheels
The 1934 Gilkie Camp Trailers catalog captures an early moment in American recreational travel, when the automobile was changing not...
When California Pottery Found Its Color
This 1937 article from California — Magazine of Pacific Business captures California pottery at the moment it was becoming a...
Glidden Pottery’s Circus and Menagerie: Ernest Sohn’s Small-Scale Spectacle
Glidden Pottery’s Circus and Menagerie patterns sit slightly apart from the company’s better-known modern serving pieces, but they are very...
Marc Bellaire’s Luau Line and the Midcentury South Pacific Imagination
Marc Bellaire’s Luau line sits in one of the most recognizable American design currents of the 1950s: the postwar fascination...
Ingle, Bellaire, and the Kashmir Line
Bellaire was part of the postwar California ceramics scene, producing hand-decorated pieces in modern shapes with strong graphic designs. He...
Ann Cochran’s Painted Stage: Ballet and Theater in California Ceramics
Ann Cochran is one of those mid-century California ceramic artists whose work is easier to find than her biography. Her...
Restoration projects
The wonderful world of QwkDog Design
The QwkDog portfolio is full of fantastic designs, illustrations, and patterns inspired by some of the best designers and artists of the 1930s, 40s, and 50s. Check it out!
