Modern Retro: Living With Mid-Century Modern Style

In recent years, mid-century modern furniture, glass, ceramics, and textiles have become hugely popular among those who appreciate the stylish contribution these pieces make to the contemporary home. Modern Retro will inspire you to create a look that combines modern classics by such visionaries as the Eameses, Bertoia, and Aalto with thrift-store finds and the best contemporary design. Created by modern classics dealer Andrew Weaving and design commentator Neil Bingham, with photography by Andrew Wood, Modern Retro is not about slavishly recreating a period feel. Instead, it shows how to take the best designs of the 1920s through 1970s and use them throughout your home in a relaxed and individual way, allowing you to make the most of the gloriously eclectic forms, colors, and patterns available.

Neil Bingham is a curator of the Drawings Collection at the Royal Institute of British Architects in London. A frequent commentator on 20th-century architecture, interior design and the decorative arts, he has contributed to World of Interiors, Country Life and Perspectives on Architecture and is author of several architecture books, including a study of the Modernist architect Christopher Nicholson. Neil is a passionate collector of the 1950s and lives in one of the celebrated 'Span' houses in Blackheath, South London.

Andrew Weaving trained as an interior designer before moving into the fashion world and working as Display Director for Browns, Calvin Klein and Armani. He has styled and written features on retro style for Elle Decoration and Metropolitan Home and now runs a gallery, Century, in London. Century specializes in mid-century modern American design, with both originals and re-editions by Charles and Ray Eames, George Nelson and Eliel Saarinen, plus work by new designers. Andrew divides his time between an early 19th-century town house furnished with pieces from the 1950s and a flat-roofed Modernist house, furnished with 1930s originals. Modern Retro is his first book.