The period between the end of World War II and the early 1960s brought a period of optimism and prosperity to the United States. John F. Kennedy becomes president, a man flies into space, and it seemed like a time when anything was possible. Gio Ponti and Carlo di Carli added sensuality to furniture not seen since the heyday of Art Nouveau. Planned obsolescence seemed like a good idea, and disposable furniture was all the rage. Joe Colombo built a chair out of cylinders covered in polyurethane foam that could be taken apart and put in a duffel bag. Wendell Castle made a white molded plastic chair that looks like a sandcastle with just a depression in the center to sit on.

The new plastics allowed furniture to be molded into every shape imaginable and some unimaginable. Places like the Superstudio and Archizoom reacted to excess by making what they called Anti-design… furniture that was uncomfortable to wear and ugly to look at.

But for most designers, form followed function, expanding on the stripped-down look of the modernists. To the Japanese influence of simple structures, they added bold colors, stretchy fabrics, and molded plywood. The use of furniture design influenced by widely versatile aluminum. As recreation became a very important part of American culture, designers began creating chairs designed for slouching. Informality ruled, and lines stretched and moved in organic shapes that only new materials made available.

Like the seminal work of Charles and Ray Eames, George Nelson of the Herman Miller furniture company took off with a style that called for “durability, unity, integrity, and inevitability.” The United States, because it could recover so quickly from the ravages of World War II, led the way.

Also, the Scandinavian countries were much less affected by the war, so they were able to start production much faster than the rest of Europe. Hans Wegner designed his Model No. JH 501 chair which became so popular that it was simply called The Chair. House Beautiful declared it the most beautiful chair in the world. It was the chair used to sit in the televised debate between JFK and Richard Nixon.

One of the most interesting aspects of Scandinavian furniture was the use of teak. Originally from the Pacific Rim countries, large military exercises cleared huge sections of forest in Thailand and the Philippines, making teak abundant and cheap. Finn Juhl was a master at shaping teak into free-form furniture.

Other hot items included the Arne Jacobsen swing chair, with its leather-upholstered polyurethane foam shell resting on copper-plated tubular legs. His 3107 chair was so popular that by the end of the 20th century, 6 million of them had been sold.

One of the strangest pieces of the period was Gaetano Pesce’s UP5 chair. It was made of high-density polyurethane foam and covered with elastic nylon. It was then placed in a vacuum chamber and shrunk to 10 percent of its original size and packaged between two heat-sealed plastic sheets. When you took it home and opened the bag, the air would seep in and the chair would return to its full size and shape.