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In addition to its many serendipitous pleasures, vintage shopping can also turn out to be productive. Such was the case when Sandra Malec, CB2 trend and development manager, came across a set of vintage Paul McCobb plates, prompting an idea for collaboration. One call later to Copenhagen-based FORM Portfolios, which owns and manages McCobb’s intellectual property, was the sprout of CB2’s latest launch, the Paul McCobb Collection, which reissues 36 of the midcentury designer’s furnishings and accessories and debuts in stores and online today.
Over the following weeks, Malec and Sara Khodja, lead merchant at CB2, alongside other colleagues, pored over catalogues and photographs in the designer’s archives. Ideas abound from McCobb’s simple linear forms—styles as versatile today as they were when originally produced. “We approached it the same way we approach our other product developments from an aesthetic and stylistic point of view,” Khodja tells AD PRO. “We wanted to make sure it felt cohesive.” The selected 36 reissued pieces divide into three collections spanning outdoor, lighting, and case goods.
Based on designs that date from 1951, the Pavilion outdoor collection of seating, tables, and planters exhibits McCobb’s fine linear silhouettes, like pencil strokes made to form. Cushions upholstered with Sunbrella performance fabrics add contemporary design engineering to the solid-iron-framed pieces, which can live stylishly indoors as well. Clean-lined dressers and nightstands dotted with pint-sized knobs (reminiscent of the styles used throughout McCobb’s Calvin Group series) make up the Connoisseur collection, while the Exposior lighting collection reflects the sculptural McCobb fixtures that debuted in the early 1950s.
“These designs are straightforward, but they are classic,” says Khodja. “Certain aesthetics have waves. These pieces are humble in the sense that they can live and complement a lot of different looks forever.”
The reissued designs are faithful to original form. The CB2 team took care to compare new production with photographs and authentic examples for veracity, and judicious creative license was taken with finishes, such as an unlacquered brass used on lighting. Khodja notes that this detail may not be completely purist, “but it offers an updated and more modern finish.” The same goes for bedroom case goods, which use ebonized oak and brass finish details on the hardware “to have a more modern and edgy look” that’s still “true and complementary to the design and the form.”
More than simply product, the collaboration between CB2 and Paul McCobb brings the designer’s philosophy of accessibility full circle. “As things become covetable and valuable, the pieces become scarce and valuable—and with that draws a higher price tag,” Khodja notes. In addition, much of McCobb’s work has been out of production for about half a century. Whether it’s via the collectible vintage market, or from entities such as Fritz Hansen and Ralph Pucci that have also reissued McCobb designs in recent years, “there are a lot of barriers to entry to something that was designed to be accessible.” Furniture in the CB2 collection is priced from $499 to $2,999, with lighting in the $129 to $499 range.
