The Nelson Swag Leg Collection in the Home
The Nelson Swag Leg Collection is now available for purchase from Herman Miller. Created 50 years ago by legendary designer and Director of Design for Herman Miller George Nelson, the collection is being re-issued to re-introduce its classic beauty, grace and functionality into an increasingly busy and flexible work and home environment. The collection includes all the necessary elements for a total home and office system, including chairs, tables, and desks. With this system you can effectively work, sit, relax, fellowship, eat and drink. With this collection you can serve your family or your work place with highly functional, highly beautiful, and highly historic furniture. Dig in.
There are a lot places in the home where separate elements of the collection find their place. The first and most obvious is the home office, where both the Nelson Swag Leg Desk and the Nelson Swag Leg Work Table can be put to effective use. Let’s start with the desk.
Nelson Swag Leg Desk
The Nelson Swag Leg Desk is the cornerstone of the entire collection. It was the desk that served as the inspiration for designer George Nelson, and the desk that the idea of swag legged furniture first attached itself to. At the time the desk was first made, 50 years ago, you couldn’t sculpt and taper metal legs. You had to go through expensive manufacturing processes, or use almost equally expensive wood. For Nelson, the Director of Design at Herman Miller for many highly productive years, there had to be a better way. At one Herman Miller meeting, he brought the question up before the group: “Wouldn't it be beautiful to have some kind of sculptured leg on a piece of furniture?” While the executives and designer in attendance would certainly have agreed to that statement, at the time there was no such option. But Nelson was determined, and he didn’t give it up. After a period of experimentation and close work with the birlliant design and engineering team at Herman Miller, the process of sculpting and molding steel was invented; it was called swag. And the very first Nelson Swag Leg piece of furniture to “roll off the line” was the desk. Immediately, it became a big hit. Not only because it was innovative and unique, which it was; but because it was beautiful and functional to boot. It fit the growing office culture of the United States, and it complemented the go-go work style that was burgeoning at the time.
The Nelson Swag Leg Desk has plenty of arresting features, all of which were popular when it was released, and all of which have new and exciting uses for today’s work environment as well (that’s one reason for the re-issue). The desk is composed of a flat plane desk top, white, which is complemented by shelf slash storage space on the back end. The shelf hangs over the back of the desk, toward the person sitting down, and underneath there is space for odds and ends, letters and pens and pencils and anything else you might want to store. The top of the shelf can be used for displays of photos or flowers or work; anything you might want. Of course today, those needs are likely to be laptop storage, MP3 docks, stereos, hard drives, and other technological objects. The Nelson Swag Leg Desk is compact enough and compartmentalized enough to perfectly handle all of those objects; not only can the desk hold a laptop in perfect proportion, it can store in underneath the shelf. The desk jut works, today and 50 years ago, and the changing times and tools haven't dulled its effectiveness in the least. In fact, it’s even more useful with the current proliferation of gadgets and small-scale technology.
Another great thing about the desk is that it’s efficient. It can fit in pretty much any corner or cranny, and in almost any room or design atmosphere. The walnut white color scheme and accents blend in with most environs, and complement a wide variety of them. The desk is not small, but it is compact; it’s also lightweight, lending itself to transportation and movement. It’s adaptable, flexible, and modern; what more could you ask of the Nelson Swag Leg Desk, made more than 50 years ago?
The desk is just one part of the furniture system, but it was the first, and it’s arguably the most important. The design decisions that went into building it guided the rest of the group inevitably from stage to stage, and the lightness, elegance, swag-legged undercarriage and white/walnut color scheme never really changed for any member of the group.
Smart Furniture and Herman Miller are proud to offer you this piece from the Nelson collection. It’s a great fit for your home or home office, and it’s lightweight, forward-looking nature has made it perfect for the current decade. This re-issue isn’t just a chance to own a classic, it’s a chance to own a piece of furniture that’s going to give you all the functionality of a new classic, with all the grace and style of an old one. Get this desk for your home today.
Nelson Swag Leg Work Table
The work table in this series was meant as a complement to the desk. It’s an extension of workspace, and in that way is the forerunner of the L shaped desk, the workstation and the modern cubicle. The super-crisp lines and the clean look of the table all correspond with its workmanlike attitude and functional nature.
The top of the table is much plainer than the desk; with either a white or walnut finish, and no shelf or storage space. The desk is meant as a complete workstation, built to handle tasks, not storage and display (unless your work is display). It’s an ideal companion in looks and feel, and it meshes perfectly well with the desk in most environments.
Like the desk, the Nelson Swag Leg Work Table is lightweight and flexible. It can be moved and adjusted with ease, just like the rest of the collection. It’s a table built for the modern workforce; it’s adaptable enough to deal with almost any work task, large enough to hold almost anything you’d need, but compact enough to be mobile and not a hindrance to the workspace. In short, it’s a classic table for the tablet (iPad) generation. This piece of furniture will look great in your home office, yes, but it can also legitimately improve your home office through functionality as well. It may have been built 50 years ago, but when it comes to modern needs, it’s as fresh as a daisy.
Smart Furniture is excited to partner with Herman Miller and offer you this product. Customizable and personal, just the way we like all of our furniture to be, it’s a great buy for your home or home office. This re-issue is an acknowledgement that this is a classic desk in both an aesthetic and functional sense; it was so ahead of its time when it was first debuted, 50 years ago, that today it still offers optimal design and style for the modern workplace. A perfect compliment to the desk, the Nelson Swag Leg Work Table is the best of both worlds; classic style and contemporary functionality. Get yours from Smart Furniture today.
Nelson Swag Leg Dining Table (Round)
For many designers and design companies, the kitchen and the dining room are the center of the home. This was especially true 50 years ago, when families spent more time around the table and less around the television. The kitchen table, or the dining room table, have a special aura in America, and in the annals of American design. Herman Miller and George Nelson are no different; when Nelson began to make his swag leg furniture, it was almost inevitable that he would eventually make a dining room table. A house isn't a home without one, and no total home furnishing system would be complete without planning for a place for families to eat and fellowship.
So the Nelson Swag Leg Round Dining Table shares much of the stylization of the other pieces in this series, but its purpose is quite different. Far from a way to make your work experience more efficient and more stylish, this table is meant as an oasis; a place where work and efficiency can be traded for nourishment and entertainment. If it has anything to do with work at all, it’s in an anti-work sense; it’s the “play hard” antidote to the old “work hard” maxim. Herman Miller and George Nelson believed in doing both, and including both a dining room table and work table in the collection shows their strong belief in both sides of home life.
The dining table does share the same aesthetic sensibility that the work table has. It’s available in white and walnut, two tasteful finishes that work well together and generally fit into most design schemes and room designs. The table features also, of course, the swag leg design of its fellow group members. There is a difference there, however; with the Nelson Swag Leg Round Dining Table, there are two sets of swag legs and walnut connectors, and they cross in an X underneath the table. This keeps them from bumping against the legs of you and your guests and family. It’s a human centered design that keeps the table from being merely an addition; it’s a carefully thought out creation of its own, sharing a look and a color scheme with the other members of the group.
There’s another feature of the table that deserves mention, and that is the fact that it’s round (there is also a rectangular option, so perhaps what’s worth mentioning is that Nelson made sure that “round” was an option as well). A round dining room table makes a statement about fellowship and equality that a squared table doesn’t and can’t. The round table assures that there is no “head” of the table, only coevals sharing a meal or a conversation or a game. The round table ensures an equal radius for every person from the center. It calls to mind the fair-mindedness of Arthur and the modern furniture movement. It’s not traditional, but it’s becoming a bigger and bigger force in the modern design world. And George Nelson was already there, seeing the future, 50 years ago.
Smart Furniture is very proud to be offering this product from Herman Miller. This re-issue of the Nelson Group of swag leg furniture is happening because changes to the current home and work environment have brought compact, light, easy to use furnishing back into style, and because the unique aesthetic of the collection looks as fresh and contemporary today as it did 50 years ago. The Nelson Swag Leg Dining Table is just one of the products being released, but it’s certainly one of the most important to design enthusiasts and people who are looking to update or furnish their homes. Get yours today from Smart Furniture.
The Nelson Swag Leg Dining Table (Rectangular)
The rectangular version of the table is often a more attractive option for people looking to update their dining room table. While the round version of the table has plenty of attributes that make it the beautiful and timeless design that it is, a round version of a table can often take up more space, and in a more awkward fashion, than a rectangular version takes up. Rectangular dining room tables often fit better in rooms, which are themselves usually rectangular. They also tend to give more space against the walls of a given space, and they set up a “head” of the table, if that’s important to the buyer.
The design of the rectangular table is the same, aesthetically, as the round table (with the obvious exception of shape). You have the option of white or a walnut finish, and the overall effect, in combination with the swag legs, is light but classic. It's lovely, but not overbearing in anyway; it doesn’t dominate rooms, it compliments them. The undersupport of the table is the same as the rouned version, where the “legs” are arranged in an X patter, keeping them out of the way of you and your guests legs when you sit.
This is a comfortable, beautiful, functional piece of dining room design, and Smart Furniture is very proud to offer it, along with Herman Miller, as part of the George Nelson Swag Leg Collection. It fits will in most homes, and with most rooms and design schemes. It’s a classic figure serving a modern purpose, and the re-issue is very well justified. Own yours today, from Smart Furniture.
The Nelson Swag Leg Chair
The Nelson Swag Leg Chair is the finishing touch for the entire collection. When Nelson first started in on the collection, he made a desk. Then he made a work table; from there a dining room table. Of course, there’s a common element to all of those structures, something that each needs but as of yet none of them had; a chair.
The chair for the Nelson group was the product of two different ideas, executed and merged to form a new kind of furniture. The first idea was the swag leg process. Nelson helped to invent a technique for shaping and sculpting metal that had never been done before, and that helped do away with the reliance on wood and very expensive production many design collections at the time were suffering from. The process, which combined high pressure and engineering expertise to produce a finished, great looking effect, was perfect for making chair and table legs. So the bottom of the chair was all Nelson.
The top of the chair was all Eames. Charles and Ray Eames, two very good friends of Nelson, were giants in the design industry. Their furniture, architecture, films and toys all contributed to the culture of the 20th century in ways that are still being studied and written about. It was Nelson that brought them into the Herman Miller fold, back in 1946, when they hadn't yet made their name in a big way. Charles and Ray had been working for some time on a molded plastic chair, and they had finally succeeded. The egg shaped, single shell, plastic chairs you see all the time in schools and auditoriums were designed by Charles and Ray. Nelson loved the process, and he loved the chairs; but he wanted to do something a bit different then Mr. and Mrs. Eames. With their blessing and permission, he designed a chair with a top of molded plastic that was actually two parts; the seat and the back. The two parts would be joined at the juncture of the armrest. This would be the top part of the Nelson Swag Leg Chair.
Splitting the plastic top into two parts achieved several goals. For one, it made the chair more comfortable. By having two parts that were contingent upon each other, there was a little more springiness in the chair, stemming from the joint. That made leaning back a lot more comfortable (and a lot more possible). It also created a gap between the seat and the back, so that air could pass through the chair. This helped a lot in terms of keeping users comfortable. Many people who sat in the Eames Molded Plastic Chairs thought they were a little warm; you could get overheated sitting in them. Not so with the Nelson Swag Leg Chair. It was as light and pretty as the Eames Chair, but was more comfortable, more adult, and more suited to the home, where it truly belonged beneath either the Nelson tables or the Swag Leg Desk.
When you merge two great ideas into a single product you run the risk of making something confusing, or something that fights against itself. But with the Nelson Swag Leg Chair that was never an issue. The two parts of the chair fit together easily, seamlessly, and and they look great. Nothing about the chair would indicate that it didn’t spring from the mind of a single designer. In a way of course, it did; this is a Herman Miller chair, and all Herman Miller products bring with them style, classic design, and a harmonious construction.
Overall, there are few better furniture systems to bring into your home than the Nelson group of furnishings. With the desk, the tables, and the chair to go with both, you have a total system of work, relaxation, style and a sense of energetic play and fellowship. For you living room, dining room, bedroom and home office the Nelson group offers classic style and sophistication. This is a design series that has lasted for decades, and figures to last for many more.
Smart Furniture is very proud to offer our customers all the significant design pieces included in the Nelson Swag Leg group of furnishings. All of these pieces come from the Herman Miller archive, and are being re-issued now because their compact size and lightweight nature, not to mention their timeless look, are all perfect for the modern work environment, including the modern home office environment. With places for MP3 docks, laptops and extra hard drives, this furniture fits just as well in the 21st century as it did in the mid-20th. The storage options and the high adaptability and flexibility of the furniture has ensured that.
George Nelson created this line of furniture with a simple, inspiring idea; to make furniture with sculpted, finished, beautiful metal legs that could taper and move, and to make the whole enterprise useful, attractive, easy to produce, and affordable. His effort was a far-reaching and unqualified success. If you’re interested in updating your home or home office, or adding a touch of classic design to your corporate office, don’t hesitate. Get your Nelson Swag Leg Desk, Nelson Swag Leg Dining Table, Nelson Swag Leg Work Table, and Nelson Swag Leg Chair today from Smart Furniture.
