Tommi Anton Parzinger (1903–1981) was a German furniture designer and painter. Born in Munich in 1903, he later moved to New York City in 1932, starting his first company in 1939. He had begun by designing for Manhattan style-setter Rena Rosenthal. His works were collected by famous clients, including Billy Baldwin, Marilyn Monroe, and a number of high-fashion New York families. Parzinger's last showroom, on East 57th Street, was closed not long after his death in 1981. His focus turned to Expressionist painting during the final 15 years of his life, no longer working on designing furniture. [1] [2]
The company Parzinger had created, Parzinger Originals, was given to his friend Donald Cameron. Pat Palumbo, the owner of the gallery that sold Parzinger's pieces, worked with Cameron after Parzinger's death on reproductions of his work based on his original working sketches. [1]
Parzinger first came to the United States from Bavaria in 1935. [3] He then started his own company that focused on designing original types of household silverware. Most of the silverware he made in the company was custom, "hand-hammering" them from sheet metal. A 1939 LIFE article stated that his silverware was unique in its "light, graceful feeling and fine etched decoration". The article went on to state that Parzinger, at the time, was recognized as the "most creative original designer of silverware in the United States". [4]
During this same time period, Parzinger also began working on building furniture and accessories to go with the pieces. His furniture then went on exhibition at the 1939 New York World's Fair. [5] The main years of his company saw Parzinger developing a new furniture line every year, which usually consisted of 12 to 30 items, with a number of them being custom designs, even though they were sold commercially as well. [6]
Parzinger's works were titled "high-style modernism", which represented a "more idiosyncratic, rarefied midcentury design". Most of the pieces he created were custom-built for large studios, with Parzinger using "cosmopolitan-looking designs, involving costly, craft-intensive materials and processes like brass work and lacquer". [1]
Ettore Sottsass was a 20th-century Italian architect, noted for also designing furniture, jewellery, glass, lighting, home and office wares, as well as numerous buildings and interiors — often defined by bold colours.
Hans Jørgensen Wegner was a Danish furniture designer. His work, along with a concerted effort from several of his manufacturers, contributed to the international popularity of mid-century Danish design. His style is often described as Organic Functionality, a modernist school with emphasis on functionality. This school of thought arose primarily in Scandinavian countries with contributions by Poul Henningsen, Alvar Aalto, and Arne Jacobsen.
Émile-Jacques Ruhlmann, , was a French furniture designer and interior decorator, who was one of the most important figures in the Art Deco movement. His furniture featured sleek designs, expensive and exotic materials and extremely fine craftsmanship, and became a symbol of the luxury and modernity of Art Deco. It also produced a reaction from other designers and architects, such as Le Corbusier, who called for simpler, functional furniture.

Gustav Stickley was an American furniture manufacturer, design leader, publisher, and a leading voice in the American Arts and Crafts movement. Stickley's design philosophy was a major influence on American Craftsman architecture.

Florence Marguerite Knoll Bassett was an American architect, interior designer, furniture designer, and entrepreneur who has been credited with revolutionizing office design and bringing modernist design to office interiors. Knoll and her husband, Hans Knoll, built Knoll Associates into a leader in the fields of furniture and interior design. She worked to professionalize the field of interior design, fighting against gendered stereotypes of the decorator. She is known for her open office designs, populated with modernist furniture and organized rationally for the needs of office workers. Her modernist aesthetic was known for clean lines and clear geometries that were humanized with textures, organic shapes, and colour.
Milo Ray Baughman, Jr. born in Goodland, Kansas, was a modern furniture designer.
Andrea Valentini is an American designer based in Rhode Island who is known for her bags.
Paul R. Evans II, known as Paul Evans, was an American-born furniture designer, sculptor, and artist, who is famous for his contributions to American furniture design and the American Craft movement of the 1970s, and with his work with the influential American manufacturer Directional Furniture. His creation of metal-sculpted furniture set him apart. He studied at the Cranbrook Academy of Art, settled in New Hope, Pennsylvania, and, for a time, shared a showroom there with woodworker Phillip Lloyd Powell.
Danish modern is a style of minimalist furniture and housewares from Denmark associated with the Danish design movement. In the 1920s, Kaare Klint embraced the principles of Bauhaus modernism in furniture design, creating clean, pure lines based on an understanding of classical furniture craftsmanship coupled with careful research into materials, proportions, and the requirements of the human body.
Jerome Ackerman (1920–2019) and Evelyn Ackerman (1924–2012) were American industrial designers who jointly contributed to the aesthetic of California mid-century modern with their ceramics, wood carvings, mosaics, textiles, and enamels in home furnishings and architectural elements. The Ackermans sold their products through their companies Jenev and ERA Industries. Evelyn was an accomplished artist and an author of books on antique toys and dolls.

George Henry Walton, was a noted Scottish architect and designer of remarkable diversity.
Rigmor Andersen was a versatile Danish designer, educator and author. Above all she is remembered for maintaining the traditions of Kaare Klint's furniture school at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts.
Warren Platner was an American architect and interior designer.
Mel Smilow was an American furniture designer, artist, and partner in Smilow-Thielle, a mid-twentieth-century firm producing affordable, modern furniture and other interior furnishings, with retail outlets located in the greater metropolitan New York area and Washington, DC.
Harvey Probber was an American furniture designer who is credited with inventing sectional, modular seating in the 1940s. A "pioneer in the application of modular seating,” many of his ideas have been adopted by other designers.
Furniture created in the Art Nouveau style was prominent from the beginning of the 1890s to the beginning of the First World War in 1914. It characteristically used forms based on nature, such as vines, flowers and water lilies, and featured curving and undulating lines, sometimes known as the whiplash line, both in the form and the decoration. Other common characteristics were asymmetry and polychromy, achieved by inlaying different colored woods.

Ilonka Karasz, was a Hungarian-American designer and illustrator known for avant-garde industrial design and for her many New Yorker magazine covers.
Holly Hunt is an American designer. She is the founder and CEO of Holly Hunt Design, a company that designs, produces and showcases custom made product including indoor and outdoor furniture, lighting, rugs, textiles and leathers.
Marmol Radziner is a design-build practice based in Los Angeles that was founded in 1989 by American architects Leo Marmol and Ron Radziner. The firm specializes in residential, commercial, hospitality, cultural, and community projects, and offers various design services, including architectural design, construction, landscape design, interior design, furniture design, jewelry design, and modern architecture restoration.
Paul Tuttle was an American designer known primarily for his work in furniture design, and secondarily for his work in interior design and architectural design. Tuttle had no formal education in design, instead drawing influence from his own experience and the mentorship of well known designers such as Alvin Lustig, Welton Becket, and Frank Lloyd Wright. Tuttle designed furniture for over 50 years, resulting in a body of work that included both manufactured and custom made furniture.