William P. O'Donnell
The New York Times

Running parallel to the story of mass-produced midcentury American furniture is a quirkier narrative of designers like Vladimir Kagan, Paul Evans, Wendell Castle and Billy Haines, who pursued their own

1  Charles and Ray Eames aside, 20th-century American furniture has hitherto been rather neglected in the rush to buy European design classics. However in recent years, there have been signs of a revival, with names like Paul Evans and Karl Springer gaining a cult following. Amazingly, this is the first ever book dedicated to post-war American craft and studio furniture.

by Lita Solis-Cohen

Modern Americana is the book that dealer Todd Merrill needed in order to show his clients where the furniture he sells fits in to the history of commissioned furniture in America. He sketches that history with a broad brush and quickly moves past the pioneers of the studio to later artisans.

Modern Americana: Studio Furniture from High Craft to High Glam is the perfect coffee table book for the intellectual.  Filled with beautiful images and written by Todd Merrill, a leading expert in furniture design (and who also boasts Lenny Kravitz as one of his loyal clients), and Julie V. Iovine, this book analyses those designers and craftsmen who inspired a new era in American furniture - the glamorous high-style period (1940 to 1999).

Handcrafted, one-of-a-kind wood pieces are high on collectors' lists.

In 1970, California woodworker Jack Rogers Hopkins was commissioned by a client to create a single piece of furniture that was at once an armchair, lamp, bookcase and ottoman. The resulting wood-and-leather design is emblematic of the studio furniture movement: elegantly curvilinear, sprouting with bonelike branches, and carrying an estimated worth of $50,000.

Twentieth-century design specialist Todd Merrill salutes Modernism's master furniture-makers--including Tommi Parzinger, Ed Wormley, Vladimir Kagan, the Lavernes, and others--in an exhibition evocative of the postwar imagination and materials.

The Robb Report:
The Global Luxury Source
by Alexandra Foster
October 14, 2008

Most weekends, you’ll find contemporary American furniture collector Todd Merrill shuttling between country estates across America seeking great discoveries for his Bleecker Street gallery in New York

ART + AUCTION
Design Redefined
by Marisa Bartolucci
October 2008

In the latter half of the 1990s, midcentury American studio furniture appeared seemingly out of nowhere like a giant ocean swell, flooding a vintage-modern market then dominated by the neat forms of George Nelson...

Home is Where the Art Is
The New York Times Style Magazine: Design Fall 2008
By Pilar Viladas
September 2008

The phrase "20th-century American design" brings to mind massproduced modernist furnishings.  But while off-the-rack furniture was having its heyday, a couture movement ...

Art+Design
Modern Americana
By Tim McKeough
September 2008

By now you know all about the icons of mass-produced, mid-century modern design — the bentwood creations of Charles and Ray Eames, the playful clocks of George Nelson, and the sculptural seats and tables of Eero Saarinen

A Studio Craft Going Glam
The New York Sun
By Alex Taylor
September 10, 2008

Anyone who thinks that all the major figures of postwar American furniture have been accounted for should think again, and think hard about the American Studio Furniture...