Mixing styles (and decades) at home

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Do you toss out the word "eclectic" to describe your furniture style?

Is it a little of this and a little of that?

Do you mix a few old things — heirlooms from grandparents, for instance — with a few newer things from the 1950s and later?

If so, you're on top of a decorating trend that's becoming more common.

Jay and Betsy Gabb know how to marry old family pieces with a strong dose of classic modern. It doesn't hurt that Betsy's a pro. She is a professor and director of the interior design program in the College of Architecture at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

The Gabbs' home in far-west Omaha's Skyline Ranches neighborhood was built in the '70s and remodeled extensively in the last seven years, yet blends iconic mid-century modern with century-old heirlooms.

"The clean lines and honest use of materials are two of the keys," she said about getting two seeming opposites to gel. "Transitional styles can be combined with lots of different things."

It can allow for something like Victorian bric-a-brac to be used as a headboard above a classic modern bed or placing a weathered newel post — the large end piece on a flight of stairs — next to a contemporary cabinet.

Though she has a doctorate in interior design, Gabb said she didn't set out to make her home a museum of mid-century modern design — and it's not, even though that element can be found throughout.

But she loves the contrast you get when you mix old and new.

"It's not boring," she said. "It brings together more than one era, in fact, spans more than a century."

The middle part of the last century is the linchpin that works with furnishings from 50 years earlier or 50 years later.

Randy Focht, a Design Gallery buyer at Nebraska Furniture Mart, said elements of style from several decades find their way into many brand-new pieces that people mix with family antiques.

"The '40s, '50s, '60s and '70s eras are something we see — not reproduction but inspiration — more of a twist on contemporary when it comes into play. An example could be the tapered legs of a sofa, very linear and clean with edited upholstery," he said.

Although that inspiration from those vintage decades is a small niche in furniture design, Focht said, it's a "niche that's growing. It's trending upward."

Some of the interest in mid-century modern design has its origins in the TV drama "Mad Men," said Mark Hinchman, an associate professor of interior design at UNL. Like the advertising execs portrayed on that show, the designers of the 1950s and '60s — the decades after World War II — were the mad men and women of their age.

They used new materials and color in new ways.

Hinchman pointed to the works of Florence Knoll Bassett and Charles Eames, among others, and a Finnish company, Marimekko, that shocked the fashion world with its color palette.

Knoll, an American furniture designer of the 1950s, squared up the sides of once-overstuffed chairs and sofas. She mixed woods and metals and added laminates as they became available.

Eames, also a designer from the 1950s, played with plywood with some everlasting results. He produced his now-famous lounge chair in 1956, its sculptural, curved platform molded for function and simplicity. He followed that with molded fiberglass and plastic chairs.

Clean, simple and tailored got a jolt in the 1960s and early '70s, when fabric design company Marimekko introduced orange, yellow and green to a world weighed down in black.

"Marimekko was shocking," Hinchman said.

And still is. The company still produces its pop-art designs. While not Marimekko, the solid-colored accent pillows in white, ecru and lime green on a sofa and bold blocks of many colors add pizzazz where black and white dominate the Gabbs' decor.

There's no better barometer of this fascination with the '50s and other decades from the previous century than the second-hand market.

The proprietors of the newly opened Midwest Pickers at 37th and Leavenworth Streets had a list of what's popular with shoppers now: Vintage 1950s, mirrored dressers and nightstands from the glamour days of old Hollywood, Danish modern furniture and Herman Miller chairs, Eames chairs and shell chairs.

April Martin and her father, Gene, pay attention to what goes out the door of their new store. They've been selling vintage items in the Omaha area for more than 20 years.

Joni Brooks of Bellevue recently stopped at Midwest Pickers looking for glass decanters, something with a '50s feel, but found the mirrored pieces interesting. Her friend Linda Norton, also of Bellevue, "looked at every rocking chair there — the more unique the better."

Their styles are quite different, Brooks defines hers by what it isn't: "It's not shabby chic, but it is a sense of flair in every room."

She likes to find an interesting piece and give it a new life, perhaps with a coat of paint or a new cushion.

Norton likes the mission style, with its simple, clean, basic lines. And yet that rocking chair, when she finds just the right one, will be "unique" and possibly old, like the dairy-farm furniture she grew up with in New York state. No doubt her find will work just fine with the mission pieces she's had especially made for her new home.

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