Think of the graceful glamour of a boudoir in a Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers movie, the suave sophistication of a James Bond set or the urbane cool of Sterling Cooper’s Manhattan headquarters in Mad Men. All evoke the aesthetic of midcentury modern furniture designer Milo Baughman (1923–2003), who was first inspired by stylish Hollywood set design and ultimately became an influential and highly respected designer himself. He once wrote: “I’m much more interested in the atmosphere of a space than in design as such … I used to go to Astaire and Rogers films twice, once to admire their incomparable dancing, the second time to admire the sets which were so unashamedly moderne.”

Baughman’s avant-garde and tony, yet affordable and pleasingly comfortable, furniture ingeniously straddled the worlds of artistry and commerce. Home Furnishings Daily referred to him as “a merchandizing wizard,” and a 1966 article in the New York Times real estate section observed, “Some homemakers may begin to wonder if the designer has gained a monopoly over all contemporary furniture sold in department stores.” In 1985, his body of work was honored by inclusion in the Whitney Museum’s exhibition “High Styles: Twentieth Century American Design,” and in 1987 he received the Distinguished Designer Award from the American Society of Furniture Designers.

As a design-savvy and starstruck young man living in mid-1940s Los Angeles, Baughman became enchanted with the Moderne style; he discovered the ritzy Rodeo Drive furniture shop of Viennese émigré Paul Frankl, “Designer to the Stars,” whose clients included celebrities Cary Grant, Katharine Hepburn, Fred Astaire, Walter Huston and Alfred Hitchcock. “Its dramatic windows, and two-level interior drew me like a magnet,” he reminisced in a 1991 design statement. He was dazzled by the materials used to great effect in Frankl’s eye-popping pieces: gleaming glass, chrome and brass, highly-lacquered ebony and mahogany and lustrous linen and mohair. He quickly became a devotee of Frankl’s jazzy “Skyscraper” style. “I loved Mr. Frankl’s glamourous, overscaled, streamlined furniture,” he reminisced. “I loved its mixture of bold but controlled proportions, sophistication and simplicity, daring and restraint … It’s been a great satisfaction to me throughout my career to pay at least an oblique homage to the great designers of the Moderne period — Gilbert Rhode, Kem Webber, Norman Bel Geddes, and above all, Mr. Frankl.” [See Modernism Vol. 10, No. 2 for an article on Frankl; Vol. 2, No. 3 and Vol. 12, No. 4 for articles on Rohde.]