Relax and Enjoy the Soft Caress of the Fun Fur

I realized that I never got around to posting photos of our completed living room so step on in!

Alas, the shag lined Root Simple headquarters exists only conceptually. While I’m just old enough to remember the era from whence these photos from the book Creating modern furniture : trends, techniques, appreciation (1975) originate, they seem like artifacts from some alien planet, perhaps the one depicted in Barbarella. Water damage from the Los Angeles Central Library fires of the 1980s only adds to the otherness of these images.

At the risk of sparking inter-generational snark warfare, let’s take a look at some more:

This blog post would have been so much better had it been written whist enthroned on this bucket seat/bookshelf combo.

After writing said blog post I could rest my laurels on this foam lounging thing. But how to exit the foam loungy thingy in a dignified manor?

Maybe I’d be better off pondering my poor dental hygiene.

This looks like a bar stool from one of those lesser, final season, 1960s Star Trek episodes.

For the young folks, driftwood furniture was the 1970s equivalent of today’s ubiquitous live edge river table. Driftwood was mandatory prior to 1980. At the very least you had a driftwood coffee table. Only the upper crust had a driftwood throne like this one.

Who knew you could make a kid burrito with 70s fiber art? I do like the idea of sleepable art.

This kid, however, looks terrified and/or trapped in her 70s sculptural play environment.

Someone please suggest the right prog rock concept album to listen to in this chair.

You’ll need to relax after the terrifying dinner party.

Lastly, yes this is Frank Gehry.

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12 Comments

  1. I have now recovered from looking at that first photo and the sentence below it. I couldn’t imagine that scene in your carefully-restored house!
    I’ll take my collection of hand-me-down and thrift shop furniture any day–instead of the monstrosities in those photos.

  2. The scary thing is that in the 1970’s I’m pretty sure that I actually liked this kind of weird stuff. I’ve now progressed to Arts and Crafts which is surely an improvement.

  3. I love it! Especially the driftwood throne and purple lounging thing and kid burrito. While I appreciate the orderly elegance of Arts & Crafts and the clean lines of Scandinavian modern, I have to say, I also adore the whacky vernacular of 70s design. It may be crazy, it may have plenty of bad ideas, but darnit, it’s fun, and people made it for themselves – it wasn’t jammed down their throats by consumer culture. We need more of that, I think.

    • I love the term “wacky vernacular.” That’s a good description of the eccentric style of the seventies. Good taste? Not so much, but definitely fun-loving and individualistic.

  4. Hahahahaha! That was fantastic. I remember pouring through these kinds of design books as a kid. I *loved* them.

    • Me too! My parents had a wacky library of 70s interests and I’m pretty sure this was one of them.

    • Likewise! It’s really awoken a thirst in me to revisit more of my childhood by looking for more of this online. We never had anything like this, but I definitely saw it in books and yearned to have that element of the fantastic and weird in our home! Thanks for the trip down memory lane, Eric!

  5. May I suggest Thick as a Brick by Jethro Tull or pretty much anything by Yes whilst balancing on the wooden sleigh chair?

    • Thank you Hazel! Thick as a Brick is already in heavy rotation around the Root Simple compound.

  6. Re: Prog Rock for the chair – I’m thinking Moody Blues: Days of Future Passed; or Pink Floyd: Dark Side of the Moon.

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