Featured Another trash find!

5 a.m. Logan Square, Chicago alleys are a gold mine.

Underside says Madison Furniture Industries but I don't think it's an Umanoff. Any ideas? Thanks!

 

Please make sure to take more pictures, especially of the underside and the chair's construction and close ups of any labels or identifiers. Good find!

 

Looks 1970s.

 

I agree, 60's or 70's. I doubt you'll find a designer for it - although made mid century, it doesn't meet Midcentury Modern standards because it is a mix of "modern" with traditional wood frame.

 

Agree late 60s or early 70s. I think this has a great look and Madison Furniture Industries definitely created some desirable pieces of furniture. Can't help with any further attribution, but not an expert in Umanoff.

 

Bump

 

According to this Design Addict post from 2009 by the former owner of Madison, Lou Shornick, Umanoff designed for them from 1962 into the early 70's.

https://designaddict.com/community/main-forum/info-finding-Umanoff15517/#post-121569

He included his email but unfortunately I see that he died in 2016. The design of your chair is more traditional than most attributed to Umanoff, so my guess would be that it is not his design. But it's always possible, and there are some old Madison catalogs out there that could answer the question.

 

Interesting side note, this chair Umanoff designed for Madison was used to build the first Captain's chair for Star Trek.

 

I saw that! What a cool dude, that Umanoff.

 

You wouldn't happen to know where I might find some of these old catalogs? My googling has proven fruitless.

 

I did a few searches and could only find single pages posted on sites like Flickr. You could try contacting those people to see if they have a full catalog. Jonathan Goldstein has a site about Umanoff (Arthurumanoff.com) and I noticed he messaged the Flickr poster who posted this page asking if they had the full catalog.

 

of course! Why didn't I think of that haha