if you still have a Formica-and-chrome dinette set or an atomic sofa in Granny's attic, now is definitely the time to dust it off and sell it. Or, better yet, display it proudly in your own home.
Midcentury modern, the clean-lined look of the '40s, '50s and '60s, has been kitschy cool with niche collectors for at least a decade. But now those retro pieces are gathering mainstream momentum.
"It's really picked up speed," said Jake Rudh, Minneapolis, founder of the Facebook group Twin Cities Midcentury Modern (TC-MCM). "That era has always caught my eye. I take collecting it seriously."
Rudh started the group almost three years ago. "It was at the height of my own midcentury modern craziness, when I was out hunting every day," trying to furnish his 1964-built home, he said. "I knew there were a lot of people like me out there." The group has almost 1,000 members who share resources and post photos of their finds.
"Younger professional people in their 20s are really into it," said Kathy Basil, showroom manager at Hirshfield's Design Resource. The look is so popular that more manufacturers are producing retro-inspired items.
Basil said she's seeing wallcoverings in big graphic patterns and printed grass cloth, vintage-look lighting such as drum chandeliers, and retro-revival carpeting, from "over-the-top shag" to geometric prints. "There's nothing cheesy about these rugs," she said. "This whole retro thing is making its way into upper-end woven carpets."
Some homeowners, such as David Anger and Jim Broberg of Edina, have been collecting midcentury modern all along. Anger, a photo stylist, is such a fan that he's styled their home into an homage to their favorite era, using pieces they've collected over two decades.
"I always say it's like a Danish history professor's house in '67," Anger said. "There are so many nuances of midcentury -- ours has gone Scandinavian."
