eBay Find of the Day: Milo Baughman Campaign Desk

If you have to bring your work home, you may as well slog through it sitting at a super-chic desk, right?

This vintage chrome base, lacquer-top campaign desk is in mint condition and was designed for high-end furniture manufacturer Thayer Coggin by the legendary Milo Baughman, whose ultra-glam pieces are much in demand these days. (In fact, a burlwood-and-bronze version of this very desk is currently listed on 1stdibs for an eye-popping $4,500.)

The sleek, sophisticated workstation measures 54 by 24 inches, with two u-handled drawers that sit flush at the front. Top it with a pretty lamp, pull up a luxurious upholstered chair, and tuck your laptop into a drawer when you're not using it, and the desk will be an incredibly stylish addition to any room you place it in.

Current bid: $610. (Hurry -- the auction ends Tuesday evening, July 15.)

eBay Find of the Day: Milo Baughman Coffee Table

If you saw my post on furniture designer Milo Baughman awhile back, you know that his pieces can fetch thousands of dollars at auction and from high-end vintage furniture dealers.

But if you're diligent, you can turn up Baughman originals for a lot less on eBay. Take this Milo Baughman coffee table, for instance.

Featuring Baughman's signature burlwood (in this case, gorgeous olive ash burl), the table measures an impressive 40 inches square and would be a truly stunning centerpiece in a modern-glam living room.

Current bid: $159.

Trendspotting: Inspiration or Imitation?

The arrival the other day of the latest CB2 catalog, coupled with my recent post about West Elm's new offerings, got me thinking: At what point does furniture "inspired" by midcentury design classics cross the line to outright mimicry?

Consider these examples:


Top left: CB2's Odyssey Table ($149); top right: IKEA's Docksta Table ($149); bottom: Eero Saarinen's iconic 1956 Tulip Table ($3,150 at Design Within Reach).

Left: CB2's Tornado Table ($119); right: Warren Platner's 1966 Side Table ($662 at Highbrow Furniture).


Left: West Elm's Patterned Veneer Coffee Table ($349); right: Milo Baughman's Burl and Chrome Coffee Table ($3,400 at 1stdibs).


Top left: CB2's Hippie Arm Chair ($229); top right: West Elm's Round Back Chair ($199); bottom: Hans Wegner's 1949 Wishbone Chair ($499 at House of Copenhagen).

Left: CB2's Double Dip Lamp ($199); right: Achille Castiglioni's circa-1962 Arco Lamp ($2,448 at DWR).

Left: West Elm's Sphere Pendant ($99); right: George Nelson's 1947 Ball Lamp ($299 at Velocity Art and Design).

Left: West Elm's Molded Desk Chair ($149); right: Charles and Ray Eames' 1948 Molded Plastic Armchair ($279 at Highbrow Furniture).

Left: West Elm's Scoop Back Chair ($79); right: Arne Jacobsen's 1955 Series 7 Chair ($394 at Retro Modern).

Left: West Elm's Wire Mesh Occasional Chair ($229); right: Harry Bertoia's 1952 Side Chair ($483 at Hive Modern).

Left: West Elm's Modern Storage Console ($599); right: Paul McCobb's 1950 Planner Group Credenza ($1,000 on eBay).

Clearly, these mass-produced knockoffs are more than "inspired" by the originals. Is that theft, or flattery? Would you rather spend thousands of dollars for a vintage, signed original or a licensed repro, or a fraction of that for a decent (if somewhat dishonest) imitation?

Personally, I'm more in the gimme-the-knockoff camp than the nothing-but-the-real-stuff crowd. If I stumbled on a mint-condition Saarinen table at a garage sale for $100, I'd be all over it. But, barring that, I don't have $3,150 for a simple white table (and I'd think twice about dropping that kind of cash even if I did) -- so I own the $149 IKEA Docksta. I feel a tiny bit guilty about it, but I'm not losing sleep at night.

How about you?

The Style Files: Milo Baughman

Welcome to The Style Files (no relation to the great blog of the same name), an occasional look at the luminaries and movements that helped shape the current design landscape.

Like a lot of the things I wind up obsessing over, I first encountered Milo Baughman's work not in a fancy showroom, chic shelter magazine, or sophisticated coffee table book (though I'm sure he's well-represented in those as well) -- but on eBay. I like to just randomly click around, following one link to another. It's an excellent way to kill what would otherwise be productive work time, of course, but it also has the happy side effect of teaching me about design styles, designers, and design history.

I doubt that I had ever even heard of Milo Baughman when I first spotted a picture of one of his furniture designs during my daily eBay wanderings. It was a credenza, I believe -- incredibly chic and clad in Baughman's signature burlwood veneer, with sleek and shiny chrome legs. I'm pretty sure that I sucked in my breath at the sight of it, and knew immediately that whoever this guy was, I needed to find out more about him pronto.

Here's what I discovered: Baughman was born in western Kansas in 1925, but moved with his family to Southern California as a baby. When he was 13, the Baughmans built a new home, and -- amazingly -- gave the barely-pubescent Milo carte blanche to design the interior and exterior. After a stint designing officer's clubs in the Army during World War II, Baughman returned to Los Angeles to attend art school before being hired at Frank Bros., the first "modern" furniture store on the West Coast.

The designer established his own firm in 1947, and quickly made a name for himself in the then-fledgling "California Modern" movement, with his designs for companies like Glenn of California and Thayer Coggin eventually becoming synonymous with the Los Angeles style. (Indeed, no Hollywood Regency room would be complete without a Baughman piece or two.)

Though he first came to prominence in the late Forties and early Fifties, Baughman's designs are often associated with over-the-top Sixties and Seventies fabulousness, since that's when his most famous creations emerged. Baughman's hallmark designs are square and streamlined, simple yet sinfully luxe, with a juxtaposition of earthy natural elements like wood burl and leather and sleek, space-age materials such as chrome.

After establishing the Department of Environmental Design at Brigham Young University in 1969 and being inducted into the Furniture Designers Hall of Fame in 1987, Baughman continued designing for Thayer Coggin into the Nineties. He died at age 77 in 2003.

Though one of Baughman's goals was to bring "good, affordable" design to the masses, well-preserved examples of his most iconic work now fetch thousands of dollars from high-end showrooms and at auction. Today, you can find Baughman's furniture on eBay, of course, as well as Architonic, artnet, 1stDibs and R 20th Century.

(Images from artnet, eBay, Florida Design Magazine, and 1stDibs.)